< You have to think that a party like the Conservatives will be in government again eventually. The relevant questions ought to be when and after what compromises?
And yet...
Every other time a party has really gone off the reservation in recent years (Labour under Foot or Corbyn, Conservatives under IDS) there has been enough ballast to stop it completely disconnecting from reality, and enough of a remnant (since it's been Bible Reference Day on PB) for the party to regrow in an electorally useful way.
This time... I'm not so sure. I want to think that the Conservative Wet tradition can regrow, but I fear that it's proved to be just too wet. My fear is that the triumph of Suella Braverman over the harmless Flick Drummond in the Battle for Fareham is a sign of where the Conservative Party is. And by the time it realises it needs saving, there won't be much left to save.
Please, pesuade me that I'm wrong.
Parties like to be in power - the Faustian deals they strike for a taste in power are remarkable to behold.
The Conservatives will eventually want power again and recognise the route back to that power is to stop chasing a world which no longer exists and start re-engaging with the world as it is.
Labour, after two terms, will have made its fair share of mistakes and enemies and those wishing to oppose the Government will need a vehicle for that opposition. It COULD be the Liberal Democrats (and nearly was in the Blair years) but it's likely after a second or perhaps third defeat, just as a man who keeps getting knocked out might decide boxing isn't the sport for him, the Conservatives might decide losing and ideological purity isn't as much fun as it seemed a few years earlier.
Re-designing Conservatism for the mid 21st century is going to be the intellectual challenge - the challenges of climate change, AI and the shifting tectonic plates of global alliances in a world (likely) dominated by the Sino-American conflict in the Pacific will all need thought.
All these tedious 'oh when will the Tories go back to the centre ground' posts, forgetting Sunak and Hunt already are relatively centrist Tory leaders, yet again completely ignore the economy.
Yes, if we were in the late 1990s with low inflation, low tax and a growing economy for an incoming Labour government there might be little scope for a rightwing Tory opposition.
However we are facing the highest inflation since the 1970s, a decade which saw 3 changes of government, as well as frequent strikes. Governments all over the world are unpopular, it is the height of arrogance and complacency for Labour supporters here to think they will be in power for decades. Indeed they might be trailing in the polls within a year of election unless they get a grip on the economy!
Watching Sunak at the Liaison Committee man he's going to be absolutely destroyed during a general election campaign and that's before lawyer Starmer tears him a new one.,
The big picture is a simple one. Two (I think) uncontroversial observations:
1 Rushi Sunak is horribly overpromoted. He might have been a decent PM ten years down the line, but right now, he isn't up to the job.
2 There is nobody in the Conservative Party who could do better than he is doing.
Therefore, Rishi, the Conservatives and the country face 12-18 months of painful stasis before the government finally falls over the cliff.
Short of a Simply Enormous Event, that's it, isn't it?
I spoke to a Brexiteer the other day, he reckons the Tories are out of power until they embrace Rejoin.
A sort of Nixon goes to China moment*.
Ironically the person he thinks who could pull this off is the person he rather despises , one Boris Johnson.
*I did point out joining the EC/EU has been standard Tory orthodoxy for most of the last 70 years. Brexit was the Nixon goes to China moment.
If the Tories embraced Rejoin they would cease to be the main party of the right in the UK, RefUK under a newly returned Farage would replace them as the main right of centre party and opposition to Labour.
Even Labour wouldn't embrace Rejoin now because of the redwall, at most they would consider EEA if they win and are then re elected.
The only UK wide party whose voter coalition would allow them to consider Rejoin are the LDs you vote for
The Tories are on course for ceasing to be the main party of the right if they embrace the blood and soil nationalism of the New Tories.
No they aren't, they are still about 25-30% with another 5-10% voting Reform.
Embrace Rejoin and they would collapse to 10% or less, probably fall to even fewer seats than the SNP and LDs under FPTP, Reform would get 30-35% and become the main opposition to Starmer's Labour government
I just can’t envisage any scenario where Reform would get 30-35%. Do you have any evidence for your assertion?
He loves Reform.
That is it.
They are a pathetic joke of a party, only HYUFD takes them seriously.
HYUFD can't imaging people continuing to follow a Conservative government if they changed stance on the EU, despite him having done exactly that.
76% of current Conservative voters voted Leave, they would not stick with a party that pushed Rejoin.
I think no one expects the next Tory leader to be a Rejoiner, I agree with you that the party is much more likely to go with a core vote right-wing culture warrior.
It is when the Tories actually want to be elected again after a generation in the wilderness that it will be so.
The thing is, that the tories can't process what has happened. They still think Brexit is a vote winner even though the polling now suggests a majority think it was a mistake and would vote to rejoin. And then, they are going on about 'getting Brexit done' by having a referendum on leaving the ECHR, not appreciating the risk that they could well lose that vote.
Just imagine the Labour posters. "The Tories want to destroy the last remains of Churchill's statesmanship.,"
People would just probably use it as an excuse to vote against the government. IE Your mortgage has gone up by £1000 per month but the tories want to have a referendum on abolishing human rights, its just altogether the wrong time, the wrong priorities completely.
Terrible Blue Wall polling for the Tories, from the South of England. R&W 2nd July. The lowest Blue Wall voting share for the Conservatives since Sunak became PM.
Con 29% (-21, -2) LD 25% (-2, +3) Lab 36% (+15, -2) Reform 5% (+5, uc) Green 43% (+3, uc)
Changes shown in brackets: change v General Election, followed by change since last Red Wall poll (mid June).
The averages for the LDs and Labour are misleading. The LDs are the clear challengers to the Conservatives in just over half of these seats, Labour being the clear challenger in about two-fifths, with it being unclear in the rest. The Labour and LD votes are already concentrated in the relevant seats and will be even more so now as tactical voting revives. By contrast, the Con vote has to be spread out everywhere to defend every one of these seats.
Given polling like this, the LDs seem to me to be very good value to be the third largest party at the next GE.
34% still back Sunak as preferred PM on that bluewall poll
A deal has been reached for Ursula von der Leyen to become the next Nato Secretary General and the first woman to head the alliance, The National understands.
The year-long extension of incumbent Jens Stoltenberg’s tenure has been arranged so Ms von der Leyen can finish her five-year term as President of the European Commission in 2024, a Nato insider has said.
As predicted by pb's own @Dura_Ace iirc (or at least, he noted the strange coincidence of JS's extension and UvdL becoming available).
A German aristocrat being parachuted into a job despite little personal achievement or democratic mandate in her history. I suppose it isn't quite as egregious as how she got the EU job. There she was given it in a backroom deal over the rules that got Juncker the job.
She was Germany's defence minister and has won as many elections as Rishi Sunak. There was no rule forcing member states to nominate ... let's check... Manfred Weber (!) as President of the Commission, for the very good reason that the national governments never ceded their rights enjoyed under law.
Hang on a minute. At the time when every major UK party protested to Juncker, we were told that it didn't matter he was a drunken muppet... he was supposedly the duly elected Spitzenkandidat, so the issue couldn't be revisited.
Then of course the next election Germany didn't like the Spitzenkandidat so they quickly switched him out. The contrast was such clear example of how the EU was always one rule for the UK and a different one for France/Germany.
So what. Given the choice the UK chose a bloke who drove around a large town during lockdown BECAUSE, not IN SPITE OF, the fact that he didn't think he could see well enough to drive. Jump up and down about that instead of crocodile tears for the larger neighbour.
This is whataboutism of the highest order. You can't defend the obvious hypocrisy of the EU system of choosing its head of governmemt so you try to distract with some random UK civil servant.
You didn't like Juncker - and by that, I mean not "everyone", but specifically you right-wing Tories. Then when you guys got the whip hand at home, you appointed Pound-Shop Peter Thiel with a sideline in cavorting with Russia. I think it's a decently representative case of motes and beams.
You don't have to be a right-wing Tory to despise Juncker, surely? The man was (is) a truly repellant excuse for a human being, ran Luxembourg as a tax haven for all sorts of dodgy multinationals, practised cronyism on a scale that would have made Nicky Morgan blink and approximately as democratic in his behaviour as Trump - arguably, less so given AFAIK Trump was never accused of using the Secret Service to tap Biden's phone.
That's even before we talk about his 'sciatica.'
You don't have to, but those ones do.
While he doesn't have the worldly experience and geopolitical leadership skills of a schoolteacher, neither does anybody else, by all their accounts.
Are you saying that you are perfectly OK with the EU being led by somebody like that?
Because if so I would advise you to get your moral compass recalibrated.
< You have to think that a party like the Conservatives will be in government again eventually. The relevant questions ought to be when and after what compromises?
And yet...
Every other time a party has really gone off the reservation in recent years (Labour under Foot or Corbyn, Conservatives under IDS) there has been enough ballast to stop it completely disconnecting from reality, and enough of a remnant (since it's been Bible Reference Day on PB) for the party to regrow in an electorally useful way.
This time... I'm not so sure. I want to think that the Conservative Wet tradition can regrow, but I fear that it's proved to be just too wet. My fear is that the triumph of Suella Braverman over the harmless Flick Drummond in the Battle for Fareham is a sign of where the Conservative Party is. And by the time it realises it needs saving, there won't be much left to save.
Please, pesuade me that I'm wrong.
Parties like to be in power - the Faustian deals they strike for a taste in power are remarkable to behold.
The Conservatives will eventually want power again and recognise the route back to that power is to stop chasing a world which no longer exists and start re-engaging with the world as it is.
Labour, after two terms, will have made its fair share of mistakes and enemies and those wishing to oppose the Government will need a vehicle for that opposition. It COULD be the Liberal Democrats (and nearly was in the Blair years) but it's likely after a second or perhaps third defeat, just as a man who keeps getting knocked out might decide boxing isn't the sport for him, the Conservatives might decide losing and ideological purity isn't as much fun as it seemed a few years earlier.
Re-designing Conservatism for the mid 21st century is going to be the intellectual challenge - the challenges of climate change, AI and the shifting tectonic plates of global alliances in a world (likely) dominated by the Sino-American conflict in the Pacific will all need thought.
All these tedious 'oh when will the Tories go back to the centre ground' posts, forgetting Sunak and Hunt already are relatively centrist Tory leaders yet again completely ignore the economy.
Yes, if we were in the late 1990s with low inflation, low tax and a growing economy for an incoming Labour government there might be little scope for a rightwing Tory opposition.
However we are facing the highest inflation since the 1970s, a decade which saw 3 changes of government, as well as frequent strikes. Governments all over the world are unpopular, it is the height of arrogance and complacency for Labour supporters here to think they will be in power for decades. Indeed they might be trailing in the polls within a year of election unless they get a grip on the economy!
Face it chum. Your partly is down the toilet and flushing it's own chain. It will be a long slow crawl back to electability, and not one via weird culture war stuff from the US right.
Watching Sunak at the Liaison Committee man he's going to be absolutely destroyed during a general election campaign and that's before lawyer Starmer tears him a new one.,
The big picture is a simple one. Two (I think) uncontroversial observations:
1 Rushi Sunak is horribly overpromoted. He might have been a decent PM ten years down the line, but right now, he isn't up to the job.
2 There is nobody in the Conservative Party who could do better than he is doing.
Therefore, Rishi, the Conservatives and the country face 12-18 months of painful stasis before the government finally falls over the cliff.
Short of a Simply Enormous Event, that's it, isn't it?
I spoke to a Brexiteer the other day, he reckons the Tories are out of power until they embrace Rejoin.
A sort of Nixon goes to China moment*.
Ironically the person he thinks who could pull this off is the person he rather despises , one Boris Johnson.
*I did point out joining the EC/EU has been standard Tory orthodoxy for most of the last 70 years. Brexit was the Nixon goes to China moment.
I am firmly of the opinion that, at some point during the next Labour decade, a Tory leadership contender will run on a Rejoin platform. And do surprisingly well. He/she probably isn't in government yet, and maybe not in Parliament.
To get a decade in power Labour will have to find a solution to the doctors 35% pay demand.
Don't pay it and get continuous NHS strikes, pay it and get equivalent pay demands from the rest of the public sector.
Perhaps they could pay everyone by taxing property but that will create other sets of people angry at losing out.
Juggling the different groups isn't going to be easy especially as those who gain forget quicker than those who lose out.
Paying something in between instead of paying the same people agency fees of £2k+ per shift to cover themselves striking will save money, improve retention and productivity.
What's something in between ?
20% ? 25% ? 30% ?
That demand for 35% is likely to increase with a Labour government.
Whatever the doctors are given will become the minimum demand for the rest of the public sector.
And why not - if the high paid get a big pay rise the low paid deserve the same.
Less than those numbers, at least per year. And anything over inflation should be for junior doctors (£40-60k) rather than the higher paid more experienced doctors who might be earning £100k+.
It would be better if we moved to make doctor pay significantly flatter over their careers rather than quite so back loaded, especially with long degrees and higher student debt, tax and house prices.
But regardless, paying regularly someone £2k to cover a single shift of a striking worker (possibly themself!) because we are not willing to give a £5k annual pay rise makes absolutely zero mathematical sense. I don't quite get why people think it saves us any taxpayer money.
Why would the doctors accept less than even 20% ?
It would be an admittance that their initial demands were based upon greed and lies and that all the damage they've done by striking was unnecessary.
As to the current costs well doesn't that apply to every dispute ? But the cost of giving way is in the further demands it prompts. In this case whatever the doctors get will be the immediate demand for the rest of the public sector.
I don't think it applies to every dispute at all. Sometimes employers have more power. But not when we need to recruit a load more people, the existing ones are leaving and we have a backlog of 7m operations.
We have just gone through a decade where a lot of public sector was heavily squeezed, initially correctly so, but it has increasingly become a doctrine done out of political belief rather than common sense and pragmatism. It is now hugely counter productive and a big part of why the government is failing.
But it always comes back to my initial point.
That if the doctors got their big pay rise then the rest of the public sector will want the same.
We can discuss the details of individual cases on the internet but in the real world it will be "they got X% so we want X%".
So its going to be strikes or more taxation.
Why shouldn't they get the same?
Why is it good enough to give double-digit pay rises to those on welfare but only 3-4% for those who work for a living like teachers?
How is it any more outrageous to be asking for more than inflation, when you're getting offered less than inflation?
The Government started this mess by dicking around and picking priority groups to pander to, which predominantly was those who aren't working because that's their client vote. When others are being treated better than you are, why shouldn't those who are working demand their slice too?
Responsible governance would have been to say "we're all in it together" and mean it, scrap the triple lock etc and have flat rates across the board - but instead some groups were pandered to and others told suck up nearly double-digit real terms pay cuts.
I agree - they should get the same.
Which is the problem PM Starmer will have:
Giving the doctors what they want means having to give everyone else the same which means more taxation on someone else plus private sector workers now being aggrieved.
Alternatively don't give the doctors what they want and have continuous strikes from them.
But. As the nurses have shown, folk get fed up of striking pretty soon. There won't be any prospect of doctors still striking this time next year.
The richer the group the more they can afford to strike.
The greater the difference between what they want and what they are offered then the more incentive to strike.
And even if the doctors give up this year they haven't gone away and their pay demands will only grow.
< You have to think that a party like the Conservatives will be in government again eventually. The relevant questions ought to be when and after what compromises?
And yet...
Every other time a party has really gone off the reservation in recent years (Labour under Foot or Corbyn, Conservatives under IDS) there has been enough ballast to stop it completely disconnecting from reality, and enough of a remnant (since it's been Bible Reference Day on PB) for the party to regrow in an electorally useful way.
This time... I'm not so sure. I want to think that the Conservative Wet tradition can regrow, but I fear that it's proved to be just too wet. My fear is that the triumph of Suella Braverman over the harmless Flick Drummond in the Battle for Fareham is a sign of where the Conservative Party is. And by the time it realises it needs saving, there won't be much left to save.
Please, pesuade me that I'm wrong.
Parties like to be in power - the Faustian deals they strike for a taste in power are remarkable to behold.
The Conservatives will eventually want power again and recognise the route back to that power is to stop chasing a world which no longer exists and start re-engaging with the world as it is.
Labour, after two terms, will have made its fair share of mistakes and enemies and those wishing to oppose the Government will need a vehicle for that opposition. It COULD be the Liberal Democrats (and nearly was in the Blair years) but it's likely after a second or perhaps third defeat, just as a man who keeps getting knocked out might decide boxing isn't the sport for him, the Conservatives might decide losing and ideological purity isn't as much fun as it seemed a few years earlier.
Re-designing Conservatism for the mid 21st century is going to be the intellectual challenge - the challenges of climate change, AI and the shifting tectonic plates of global alliances in a world (likely) dominated by the Sino-American conflict in the Pacific will all need thought.
All these tedious 'oh when will the Tories go back to the centre ground' posts, forgetting Sunak and Hunt already are relatively centrist Tory leaders, yet again completely ignore the economy.
Yes, if we were in the late 1990s with low inflation, low tax and a growing economy for an incoming Labour government there might be little scope for a rightwing Tory opposition.
However we are facing the highest inflation since the 1970s, a decade which saw 3 changes of government, as well as frequent strikes. Governments all over the world are unpopular, it is the height of arrogance and complacency for Labour supporters here to think they will be in power for decades. Indeed they might be trailing in the polls within a year of election unless they get a grip on the economy!
Doesn't this imperial measure thingie come around every few months? Then we discuss it for a day and nowt happens. Then it comes around again. It's a less frequent version of our weekly Russian troll.
We should resuscitate the discussion on Saturday and see what this week’s troll has to contribute.
I am very late to this party (thanks to finding it impossible to get a browser to log on correctly from my iPhone or iPad) but in the spirit of giving you a good laugh or something similar, here in Malaysia, where I live but not currently reside, we use metric units for everything BUT floor measurements. My wife is a real estate agent and area is quoted in sq ft. and that causes me no end of amusement when I see sq ft converted to (sq m) which are then quoted to three decimal places in their legal agreements. Whilst on this theme I did a Further Maths A Level in the early 70s which was taught by the recently retired Deputy Headmaster of the school I attended. Our text books were in Imperial units so he taught us that (ie foot poundal, ft per sec and so on). Two weeks before the A Level he announced that the exam would be in metric units and proceeded to give us a crash course in the equivalent metric units. I got a grade E, which counted as a bare pass in those days. Roll on to my first year at University studying Electrical Engineering and lo and behold the maths we are being taught is what I had leant in the Further Maths A Level. I was dreading this but with a different teacher and a year studying in metric units the outcome was different. Come the exam we were told that to avoid wholescale failure ALL the questions we answered would be marked. So don't just answer 5 out of 8 but do them all and aim for 160%! Well I knew how to answer 6 of them correctly and that became the only time I have ever scored more than 100% in an exam. (Yes, there were quite a few who failed maths that year and who transferred to 'other subjects' rather than drop out).
A deal has been reached for Ursula von der Leyen to become the next Nato Secretary General and the first woman to head the alliance, The National understands.
The year-long extension of incumbent Jens Stoltenberg’s tenure has been arranged so Ms von der Leyen can finish her five-year term as President of the European Commission in 2024, a Nato insider has said.
As predicted by pb's own @Dura_Ace iirc (or at least, he noted the strange coincidence of JS's extension and UvdL becoming available).
A German aristocrat being parachuted into a job despite little personal achievement or democratic mandate in her history. I suppose it isn't quite as egregious as how she got the EU job. There she was given it in a backroom deal over the rules that got Juncker the job.
She was Germany's defence minister and has won as many elections as Rishi Sunak. There was no rule forcing member states to nominate ... let's check... Manfred Weber (!) as President of the Commission, for the very good reason that the national governments never ceded their rights enjoyed under law.
Hang on a minute. At the time when every major UK party protested to Juncker, we were told that it didn't matter he was a drunken muppet... he was supposedly the duly elected Spitzenkandidat, so the issue couldn't be revisited.
Then of course the next election Germany didn't like the Spitzenkandidat so they quickly switched him out. The contrast was such clear example of how the EU was always one rule for the UK and a different one for France/Germany.
So what. Given the choice the UK chose a bloke who drove around a large town during lockdown BECAUSE, not IN SPITE OF, the fact that he didn't think he could see well enough to drive. Jump up and down about that instead of crocodile tears for the larger neighbour.
This is whataboutism of the highest order. You can't defend the obvious hypocrisy of the EU system of choosing its head of governmemt so you try to distract with some random UK civil servant.
You didn't like Juncker - and by that, I mean not "everyone", but specifically you right-wing Tories. Then when you guys got the whip hand at home, you appointed Pound-Shop Peter Thiel with a sideline in cavorting with Russia. I think it's a decently representative case of motes and beams.
You don't have to be a right-wing Tory to despise Juncker, surely? The man was (is) a truly repellant excuse for a human being, ran Luxembourg as a tax haven for all sorts of dodgy multinationals, practised cronyism on a scale that would have made Nicky Morgan blink and approximately as democratic in his behaviour as Trump - arguably, less so given AFAIK Trump was never accused of using the Secret Service to tap Biden's phone.
That's even before we talk about his 'sciatica.'
You don't have to, but those ones do.
While he doesn't have the worldly experience and geopolitical leadership skills of a schoolteacher, neither does anybody else, by all their accounts.
Are you saying that you are perfectly OK with the EU being led by somebody like that?
Because if so I would advise you to get your moral compass recalibrated.
Being pissed and self serving never did Churchill any harm.
Another nugget from my recent reading. The soldiers of the Union were often as brutally racist as the Confederates
eg They would "liberate" a Southern Plantation and immediately rape all the young, attractive, female slaves. Then they'd set the slaves to work, cooking, cleaning, farming - for no money. So life got no better for slaves at all, unless you could get away, and for the women slaves it got worse
Have you apologised for spreading fake news about the French riots?
Was one of the photos I resnapped of dubious origin?
Desole, if so. Also: pfff!
Several in fact.
The sniper most egregiously.
So many PBers were shocked that you fell for obvious bullshit.
Others were of course not in the slightest bit shocked.
Others may need their irony meters calibrating.
Difficult to tell, there are quite a few credulous PBers on the UFOs are REAL/upside of Truss/upside of Putin/Wokies under the divan bullshit train. Some PB sharp minds were even convinced that Vlad was a goner a couple of weeks ago.
The thing about PB is I can never predict what some of us are going to have a big panic about.
I do not absolve myself of this. I could definitely panic about this nuclear power station in Ukraine (Zelensky has just put a video up on twitter about explosives).
< You have to think that a party like the Conservatives will be in government again eventually. The relevant questions ought to be when and after what compromises?
And yet...
Every other time a party has really gone off the reservation in recent years (Labour under Foot or Corbyn, Conservatives under IDS) there has been enough ballast to stop it completely disconnecting from reality, and enough of a remnant (since it's been Bible Reference Day on PB) for the party to regrow in an electorally useful way.
This time... I'm not so sure. I want to think that the Conservative Wet tradition can regrow, but I fear that it's proved to be just too wet. My fear is that the triumph of Suella Braverman over the harmless Flick Drummond in the Battle for Fareham is a sign of where the Conservative Party is. And by the time it realises it needs saving, there won't be much left to save.
Please, pesuade me that I'm wrong.
Parties like to be in power - the Faustian deals they strike for a taste in power are remarkable to behold.
The Conservatives will eventually want power again and recognise the route back to that power is to stop chasing a world which no longer exists and start re-engaging with the world as it is.
Labour, after two terms, will have made its fair share of mistakes and enemies and those wishing to oppose the Government will need a vehicle for that opposition. It COULD be the Liberal Democrats (and nearly was in the Blair years) but it's likely after a second or perhaps third defeat, just as a man who keeps getting knocked out might decide boxing isn't the sport for him, the Conservatives might decide losing and ideological purity isn't as much fun as it seemed a few years earlier.
Re-designing Conservatism for the mid 21st century is going to be the intellectual challenge - the challenges of climate change, AI and the shifting tectonic plates of global alliances in a world (likely) dominated by the Sino-American conflict in the Pacific will all need thought.
All these tedious 'oh when will the Tories go back to the centre ground' posts, forgetting Sunak and Hunt already are relatively centrist Tory leaders yet again completely ignore the economy.
Yes, if we were in the late 1990s with low inflation, low tax and a growing economy for an incoming Labour government there might be little scope for a rightwing Tory opposition.
However we are facing the highest inflation since the 1970s, a decade which saw 3 changes of government, as well as frequent strikes. Governments all over the world are unpopular, it is the height of arrogance and complacency for Labour supporters here to think they will be in power for decades. Indeed they might be trailing in the polls within a year of election unless they get a grip on the economy!
Face it chum. Your partly is down the toilet and flushing it's own chain. It will be a long slow crawl back to electability, and not one via weird culture war stuff from the US right.
No, if Labour put up tax, inflation continues to rise, strikes get worse, interest rates climb further and growth slows I predict the Conservatives will be back ahead in the polls within a year of election defeat. No matter how rightwing their leader
Hours of disruption on the District and Hammersmith & City lines due to "a faulty train".
I can't believe in 2023 the mechanisms don't exist to resolve such issues and restore a service.
A milk tanker overturned on the M6 caused knock on delays across the NW on Sunday. The three Cumbrian RL sides had two delayed kick offs and a complete postponement from an incident which happened at 7 am.
< You have to think that a party like the Conservatives will be in government again eventually. The relevant questions ought to be when and after what compromises?
And yet...
Every other time a party has really gone off the reservation in recent years (Labour under Foot or Corbyn, Conservatives under IDS) there has been enough ballast to stop it completely disconnecting from reality, and enough of a remnant (since it's been Bible Reference Day on PB) for the party to regrow in an electorally useful way.
This time... I'm not so sure. I want to think that the Conservative Wet tradition can regrow, but I fear that it's proved to be just too wet. My fear is that the triumph of Suella Braverman over the harmless Flick Drummond in the Battle for Fareham is a sign of where the Conservative Party is. And by the time it realises it needs saving, there won't be much left to save.
Please, pesuade me that I'm wrong.
Parties like to be in power - the Faustian deals they strike for a taste in power are remarkable to behold.
The Conservatives will eventually want power again and recognise the route back to that power is to stop chasing a world which no longer exists and start re-engaging with the world as it is.
Labour, after two terms, will have made its fair share of mistakes and enemies and those wishing to oppose the Government will need a vehicle for that opposition. It COULD be the Liberal Democrats (and nearly was in the Blair years) but it's likely after a second or perhaps third defeat, just as a man who keeps getting knocked out might decide boxing isn't the sport for him, the Conservatives might decide losing and ideological purity isn't as much fun as it seemed a few years earlier.
Re-designing Conservatism for the mid 21st century is going to be the intellectual challenge - the challenges of climate change, AI and the shifting tectonic plates of global alliances in a world (likely) dominated by the Sino-American conflict in the Pacific will all need thought.
All these tedious 'oh when will the Tories go back to the centre ground' posts, forgetting Sunak and Hunt already are relatively centrist Tory leaders, yet again completely ignore the economy.
Yes, if we were in the late 1990s with low inflation, low tax and a growing economy for an incoming Labour government there might be little scope for a rightwing Tory opposition.
However we are facing the highest inflation since the 1970s, a decade which saw 3 changes of government, as well as frequent strikes. Governments all over the world are unpopular, it is the height of arrogance and complacency for Labour supporters here to think they will be in power for decades. Indeed they might be trailing in the polls within a year of election unless they get a grip on the economy!
When are you going to join Reform?
He's always going on about the need for an English Parliament, contrary to "Conservative" and "Unionist" policy. Wonder which parties cater for that?
< You have to think that a party like the Conservatives will be in government again eventually. The relevant questions ought to be when and after what compromises?
And yet...
Every other time a party has really gone off the reservation in recent years (Labour under Foot or Corbyn, Conservatives under IDS) there has been enough ballast to stop it completely disconnecting from reality, and enough of a remnant (since it's been Bible Reference Day on PB) for the party to regrow in an electorally useful way.
This time... I'm not so sure. I want to think that the Conservative Wet tradition can regrow, but I fear that it's proved to be just too wet. My fear is that the triumph of Suella Braverman over the harmless Flick Drummond in the Battle for Fareham is a sign of where the Conservative Party is. And by the time it realises it needs saving, there won't be much left to save.
Please, pesuade me that I'm wrong.
Parties like to be in power - the Faustian deals they strike for a taste in power are remarkable to behold.
The Conservatives will eventually want power again and recognise the route back to that power is to stop chasing a world which no longer exists and start re-engaging with the world as it is.
Labour, after two terms, will have made its fair share of mistakes and enemies and those wishing to oppose the Government will need a vehicle for that opposition. It COULD be the Liberal Democrats (and nearly was in the Blair years) but it's likely after a second or perhaps third defeat, just as a man who keeps getting knocked out might decide boxing isn't the sport for him, the Conservatives might decide losing and ideological purity isn't as much fun as it seemed a few years earlier.
Re-designing Conservatism for the mid 21st century is going to be the intellectual challenge - the challenges of climate change, AI and the shifting tectonic plates of global alliances in a world (likely) dominated by the Sino-American conflict in the Pacific will all need thought.
All these tedious 'oh when will the Tories go back to the centre ground' posts, forgetting Sunak and Hunt already are relatively centrist Tory leaders yet again completely ignore the economy.
Yes, if we were in the late 1990s with low inflation, low tax and a growing economy for an incoming Labour government there might be little scope for a rightwing Tory opposition.
However we are facing the highest inflation since the 1970s, a decade which saw 3 changes of government, as well as frequent strikes. Governments all over the world are unpopular, it is the height of arrogance and complacency for Labour supporters here to think they will be in power for decades. Indeed they might be trailing in the polls within a year of election unless they get a grip on the economy!
Face it chum. Your partly is down the toilet and flushing it's own chain. It will be a long slow crawl back to electability, and not one via weird culture war stuff from the US right.
No, if Labour put up tax, inflation continues to rise, strikes get worse, interest rates climb further and growth slows I predict the Conservatives will be back ahead in the polls within a year of election defeat. No matter how rightwing their leader
< You have to think that a party like the Conservatives will be in government again eventually. The relevant questions ought to be when and after what compromises?
And yet...
Every other time a party has really gone off the reservation in recent years (Labour under Foot or Corbyn, Conservatives under IDS) there has been enough ballast to stop it completely disconnecting from reality, and enough of a remnant (since it's been Bible Reference Day on PB) for the party to regrow in an electorally useful way.
This time... I'm not so sure. I want to think that the Conservative Wet tradition can regrow, but I fear that it's proved to be just too wet. My fear is that the triumph of Suella Braverman over the harmless Flick Drummond in the Battle for Fareham is a sign of where the Conservative Party is. And by the time it realises it needs saving, there won't be much left to save.
Please, pesuade me that I'm wrong.
Parties like to be in power - the Faustian deals they strike for a taste in power are remarkable to behold.
The Conservatives will eventually want power again and recognise the route back to that power is to stop chasing a world which no longer exists and start re-engaging with the world as it is.
Labour, after two terms, will have made its fair share of mistakes and enemies and those wishing to oppose the Government will need a vehicle for that opposition. It COULD be the Liberal Democrats (and nearly was in the Blair years) but it's likely after a second or perhaps third defeat, just as a man who keeps getting knocked out might decide boxing isn't the sport for him, the Conservatives might decide losing and ideological purity isn't as much fun as it seemed a few years earlier.
Re-designing Conservatism for the mid 21st century is going to be the intellectual challenge - the challenges of climate change, AI and the shifting tectonic plates of global alliances in a world (likely) dominated by the Sino-American conflict in the Pacific will all need thought.
All these tedious 'oh when will the Tories go back to the centre ground' posts, forgetting Sunak and Hunt already are relatively centrist Tory leaders yet again completely ignore the economy.
Yes, if we were in the late 1990s with low inflation, low tax and a growing economy for an incoming Labour government there might be little scope for a rightwing Tory opposition.
However we are facing the highest inflation since the 1970s, a decade which saw 3 changes of government, as well as frequent strikes. Governments all over the world are unpopular, it is the height of arrogance and complacency for Labour supporters here to think they will be in power for decades. Indeed they might be trailing in the polls within a year of election unless they get a grip on the economy!
Face it chum. Your partly is down the toilet and flushing it's own chain. It will be a long slow crawl back to electability, and not one via weird culture war stuff from the US right.
No, if Labour put up tax, inflation continues to rise, strikes get worse, interest rates climb further and growth slows I predict the Conservatives will be back ahead in the polls within a year of election defeat. No matter how rightwing their leader
Only the first of those is likely and the Tories are doing that anyway.
It turns out the last election was a good one to lose and the next will be a good one to win I reckon.
An example of incremental improvement on battery technology. A reformulation of existing cathode materials should yield around a 10% increase in performance (and predicted 30% increase in battery longevity).
Watching Sunak at the Liaison Committee man he's going to be absolutely destroyed during a general election campaign and that's before lawyer Starmer tears him a new one.,
The big picture is a simple one. Two (I think) uncontroversial observations:
1 Rushi Sunak is horribly overpromoted. He might have been a decent PM ten years down the line, but right now, he isn't up to the job.
2 There is nobody in the Conservative Party who could do better than he is doing.
Therefore, Rishi, the Conservatives and the country face 12-18 months of painful stasis before the government finally falls over the cliff.
Short of a Simply Enormous Event, that's it, isn't it?
I spoke to a Brexiteer the other day, he reckons the Tories are out of power until they embrace Rejoin.
A sort of Nixon goes to China moment*.
Ironically the person he thinks who could pull this off is the person he rather despises , one Boris Johnson.
*I did point out joining the EC/EU has been standard Tory orthodoxy for most of the last 70 years. Brexit was the Nixon goes to China moment.
If the Tories embraced Rejoin they would cease to be the main party of the right in the UK, RefUK under a newly returned Farage would replace them as the main right of centre party and opposition to Labour.
Even Labour wouldn't embrace Rejoin now because of the redwall, at most they would consider EEA if they win and are then re elected.
The only UK wide party whose voter coalition would allow them to consider Rejoin are the LDs you vote for
The Tories are on course for ceasing to be the main party of the right if they embrace the blood and soil nationalism of the New Tories.
No they aren't, they are still about 25-30% with another 5-10% voting Reform.
Embrace Rejoin and they would collapse to 10% or less, probably fall to even fewer seats than the SNP and LDs under FPTP, Reform would get 30-35% and become the main opposition to Starmer's Labour government
I just can’t envisage any scenario where Reform would get 30-35%. Do you have any evidence for your assertion?
He loves Reform.
That is it.
They are a pathetic joke of a party, only HYUFD takes them seriously.
HYUFD can't imaging people continuing to follow a Conservative government if they changed stance on the EU, despite him having done exactly that.
< You have to think that a party like the Conservatives will be in government again eventually. The relevant questions ought to be when and after what compromises?
And yet...
Every other time a party has really gone off the reservation in recent years (Labour under Foot or Corbyn, Conservatives under IDS) there has been enough ballast to stop it completely disconnecting from reality, and enough of a remnant (since it's been Bible Reference Day on PB) for the party to regrow in an electorally useful way.
This time... I'm not so sure. I want to think that the Conservative Wet tradition can regrow, but I fear that it's proved to be just too wet. My fear is that the triumph of Suella Braverman over the harmless Flick Drummond in the Battle for Fareham is a sign of where the Conservative Party is. And by the time it realises it needs saving, there won't be much left to save.
Please, pesuade me that I'm wrong.
Parties like to be in power - the Faustian deals they strike for a taste in power are remarkable to behold.
The Conservatives will eventually want power again and recognise the route back to that power is to stop chasing a world which no longer exists and start re-engaging with the world as it is.
Labour, after two terms, will have made its fair share of mistakes and enemies and those wishing to oppose the Government will need a vehicle for that opposition. It COULD be the Liberal Democrats (and nearly was in the Blair years) but it's likely after a second or perhaps third defeat, just as a man who keeps getting knocked out might decide boxing isn't the sport for him, the Conservatives might decide losing and ideological purity isn't as much fun as it seemed a few years earlier.
Re-designing Conservatism for the mid 21st century is going to be the intellectual challenge - the challenges of climate change, AI and the shifting tectonic plates of global alliances in a world (likely) dominated by the Sino-American conflict in the Pacific will all need thought.
All these tedious 'oh when will the Tories go back to the centre ground' posts, forgetting Sunak and Hunt already are relatively centrist Tory leaders yet again completely ignore the economy.
Yes, if we were in the late 1990s with low inflation, low tax and a growing economy for an incoming Labour government there might be little scope for a rightwing Tory opposition.
However we are facing the highest inflation since the 1970s, a decade which saw 3 changes of government, as well as frequent strikes. Governments all over the world are unpopular, it is the height of arrogance and complacency for Labour supporters here to think they will be in power for decades. Indeed they might be trailing in the polls within a year of election unless they get a grip on the economy!
Face it chum. Your partly is down the toilet and flushing it's own chain. It will be a long slow crawl back to electability, and not one via weird culture war stuff from the US right.
No, if Labour put up tax, inflation continues to rise, strikes get worse, interest rates climb further and growth slows I predict the Conservatives will be back ahead in the polls within a year of election defeat. No matter how rightwing their leader
Poll leads are not everything.
Just ask Ed Miliband.
If there had been a general election in 2012 or 2013 polls showed Ed Miliband would have won it comfortably despite Labour losing power only 2 or 3 years before
< You have to think that a party like the Conservatives will be in government again eventually. The relevant questions ought to be when and after what compromises?
And yet...
Every other time a party has really gone off the reservation in recent years (Labour under Foot or Corbyn, Conservatives under IDS) there has been enough ballast to stop it completely disconnecting from reality, and enough of a remnant (since it's been Bible Reference Day on PB) for the party to regrow in an electorally useful way.
This time... I'm not so sure. I want to think that the Conservative Wet tradition can regrow, but I fear that it's proved to be just too wet. My fear is that the triumph of Suella Braverman over the harmless Flick Drummond in the Battle for Fareham is a sign of where the Conservative Party is. And by the time it realises it needs saving, there won't be much left to save.
Please, pesuade me that I'm wrong.
Parties like to be in power - the Faustian deals they strike for a taste in power are remarkable to behold.
The Conservatives will eventually want power again and recognise the route back to that power is to stop chasing a world which no longer exists and start re-engaging with the world as it is.
Labour, after two terms, will have made its fair share of mistakes and enemies and those wishing to oppose the Government will need a vehicle for that opposition. It COULD be the Liberal Democrats (and nearly was in the Blair years) but it's likely after a second or perhaps third defeat, just as a man who keeps getting knocked out might decide boxing isn't the sport for him, the Conservatives might decide losing and ideological purity isn't as much fun as it seemed a few years earlier.
Re-designing Conservatism for the mid 21st century is going to be the intellectual challenge - the challenges of climate change, AI and the shifting tectonic plates of global alliances in a world (likely) dominated by the Sino-American conflict in the Pacific will all need thought.
All these tedious 'oh when will the Tories go back to the centre ground' posts, forgetting Sunak and Hunt already are relatively centrist Tory leaders yet again completely ignore the economy.
Yes, if we were in the late 1990s with low inflation, low tax and a growing economy for an incoming Labour government there might be little scope for a rightwing Tory opposition.
However we are facing the highest inflation since the 1970s, a decade which saw 3 changes of government, as well as frequent strikes. Governments all over the world are unpopular, it is the height of arrogance and complacency for Labour supporters here to think they will be in power for decades. Indeed they might be trailing in the polls within a year of election unless they get a grip on the economy!
Face it chum. Your partly is down the toilet and flushing it's own chain. It will be a long slow crawl back to electability, and not one via weird culture war stuff from the US right.
No, if Labour put up tax, inflation continues to rise, strikes get worse, interest rates climb further and growth slows I predict the Conservatives will be back ahead in the polls within a year of election defeat. No matter how rightwing their leader
The Conservatives led during the 1997-2001 Parliament in the midst of the fuel crisis but were well beaten in the 2001 election.
< You have to think that a party like the Conservatives will be in government again eventually. The relevant questions ought to be when and after what compromises?
And yet...
Every other time a party has really gone off the reservation in recent years (Labour under Foot or Corbyn, Conservatives under IDS) there has been enough ballast to stop it completely disconnecting from reality, and enough of a remnant (since it's been Bible Reference Day on PB) for the party to regrow in an electorally useful way.
This time... I'm not so sure. I want to think that the Conservative Wet tradition can regrow, but I fear that it's proved to be just too wet. My fear is that the triumph of Suella Braverman over the harmless Flick Drummond in the Battle for Fareham is a sign of where the Conservative Party is. And by the time it realises it needs saving, there won't be much left to save.
Please, pesuade me that I'm wrong.
Parties like to be in power - the Faustian deals they strike for a taste in power are remarkable to behold.
The Conservatives will eventually want power again and recognise the route back to that power is to stop chasing a world which no longer exists and start re-engaging with the world as it is.
Labour, after two terms, will have made its fair share of mistakes and enemies and those wishing to oppose the Government will need a vehicle for that opposition. It COULD be the Liberal Democrats (and nearly was in the Blair years) but it's likely after a second or perhaps third defeat, just as a man who keeps getting knocked out might decide boxing isn't the sport for him, the Conservatives might decide losing and ideological purity isn't as much fun as it seemed a few years earlier.
Re-designing Conservatism for the mid 21st century is going to be the intellectual challenge - the challenges of climate change, AI and the shifting tectonic plates of global alliances in a world (likely) dominated by the Sino-American conflict in the Pacific will all need thought.
All these tedious 'oh when will the Tories go back to the centre ground' posts, forgetting Sunak and Hunt already are relatively centrist Tory leaders yet again completely ignore the economy.
Yes, if we were in the late 1990s with low inflation, low tax and a growing economy for an incoming Labour government there might be little scope for a rightwing Tory opposition.
However we are facing the highest inflation since the 1970s, a decade which saw 3 changes of government, as well as frequent strikes. Governments all over the world are unpopular, it is the height of arrogance and complacency for Labour supporters here to think they will be in power for decades. Indeed they might be trailing in the polls within a year of election unless they get a grip on the economy!
Face it chum. Your partly is down the toilet and flushing it's own chain. It will be a long slow crawl back to electability, and not one via weird culture war stuff from the US right.
No, if Labour put up tax, inflation continues to rise, strikes get worse, interest rates climb further and growth slows I predict the Conservatives will be back ahead in the polls within a year of election defeat. No matter how rightwing their leader
Poll leads are not everything.
Just ask Ed Miliband.
If there had been a general election in 2012 polls showed Ed Miliband would have won it comfortably.
Polls do not show things like that.
If there had been a general election in 2017 polls showed Mrs May would have won it comfortably.
< You have to think that a party like the Conservatives will be in government again eventually. The relevant questions ought to be when and after what compromises?
And yet...
Every other time a party has really gone off the reservation in recent years (Labour under Foot or Corbyn, Conservatives under IDS) there has been enough ballast to stop it completely disconnecting from reality, and enough of a remnant (since it's been Bible Reference Day on PB) for the party to regrow in an electorally useful way.
This time... I'm not so sure. I want to think that the Conservative Wet tradition can regrow, but I fear that it's proved to be just too wet. My fear is that the triumph of Suella Braverman over the harmless Flick Drummond in the Battle for Fareham is a sign of where the Conservative Party is. And by the time it realises it needs saving, there won't be much left to save.
Please, pesuade me that I'm wrong.
Parties like to be in power - the Faustian deals they strike for a taste in power are remarkable to behold.
The Conservatives will eventually want power again and recognise the route back to that power is to stop chasing a world which no longer exists and start re-engaging with the world as it is.
Labour, after two terms, will have made its fair share of mistakes and enemies and those wishing to oppose the Government will need a vehicle for that opposition. It COULD be the Liberal Democrats (and nearly was in the Blair years) but it's likely after a second or perhaps third defeat, just as a man who keeps getting knocked out might decide boxing isn't the sport for him, the Conservatives might decide losing and ideological purity isn't as much fun as it seemed a few years earlier.
Re-designing Conservatism for the mid 21st century is going to be the intellectual challenge - the challenges of climate change, AI and the shifting tectonic plates of global alliances in a world (likely) dominated by the Sino-American conflict in the Pacific will all need thought.
All these tedious 'oh when will the Tories go back to the centre ground' posts, forgetting Sunak and Hunt already are relatively centrist Tory leaders yet again completely ignore the economy.
Yes, if we were in the late 1990s with low inflation, low tax and a growing economy for an incoming Labour government there might be little scope for a rightwing Tory opposition.
However we are facing the highest inflation since the 1970s, a decade which saw 3 changes of government, as well as frequent strikes. Governments all over the world are unpopular, it is the height of arrogance and complacency for Labour supporters here to think they will be in power for decades. Indeed they might be trailing in the polls within a year of election unless they get a grip on the economy!
Face it chum. Your partly is down the toilet and flushing it's own chain. It will be a long slow crawl back to electability, and not one via weird culture war stuff from the US right.
No, if Labour put up tax, inflation continues to rise, strikes get worse, interest rates climb further and growth slows I predict the Conservatives will be back ahead in the polls within a year of election defeat. No matter how rightwing their leader
The Conservatives led during the 1997-2001 Parliament in the midst of the fuel crisis but were well beaten in the 2001 election.
Exactly, which shows if the economy turns poor so swiftly can the polls no matter how right or leftwing the opposition.
Had the fuel crisis not been resolved by the 2001 election it would have been much closer
Doesn't this imperial measure thingie come around every few months? Then we discuss it for a day and nowt happens. Then it comes around again. It's a less frequent version of our weekly Russian troll.
We should resuscitate the discussion on Saturday and see what this week’s troll has to contribute.
I am very late to this party (thanks to finding it impossible to get a browser to log on correctly from my iPhone or iPad) but in the spirit of giving you a good laugh or something similar, here in Malaysia, where I live but not currently reside, we use metric units for everything BUT floor measurements. My wife is a real estate agent and area is quoted in sq ft. and that causes me no end of amusement when I see sq ft converted to (sq m) which are then quoted to three decimal places in their legal agreements. Whilst on this theme I did a Further Maths A Level in the early 70s which was taught by the recently retired Deputy Headmaster of the school I attended. Our text books were in Imperial units so he taught us that (ie foot poundal, ft per sec and so on). Two weeks before the A Level he announced that the exam would be in metric units and proceeded to give us a crash course in the equivalent metric units. I got a grade E, which counted as a bare pass in those days. Roll on to my first year at University studying Electrical Engineering and lo and behold the maths we are being taught is what I had leant in the Further Maths A Level. I was dreading this but with a different teacher and a year studying in metric units the outcome was different. Come the exam we were told that to avoid wholescale failure ALL the questions we answered would be marked. So don't just answer 5 out of 8 but do them all and aim for 160%! Well I knew how to answer 6 of them correctly and that became the only time I have ever scored more than 100% in an exam. (Yes, there were quite a few who failed maths that year and who transferred to 'other subjects' rather than drop out).
Heh. 0.001 square metres is about the size of a pencil. Definitely a case of overprecision.
Terrible Blue Wall polling for the Tories, from the South of England. R&W 2nd July. The lowest Blue Wall voting share for the Conservatives since Sunak became PM.
Con 29% (-21, -2) LD 25% (-2, +3) Lab 36% (+15, -2) Reform 5% (+5, uc) Green 43% (+3, uc)
Changes shown in brackets: change v General Election, followed by change since last Red Wall poll (mid June).
The averages for the LDs and Labour are misleading. The LDs are the clear challengers to the Conservatives in just over half of these seats, Labour being the clear challenger in about two-fifths, with it being unclear in the rest. The Labour and LD votes are already concentrated in the relevant seats and will be even more so now as tactical voting revives. By contrast, the Con vote has to be spread out everywhere to defend every one of these seats.
Given polling like this, the LDs seem to me to be very good value to be the third largest party at the next GE.
34% still back Sunak as preferred PM on that bluewall poll
So what? Hardly relevant given that the question was only asked in terms of Sunak v Starmer and yet in more than half of those seats the challenge for the Conservatives comes from the LDs.
To put that 34% in better context, it's the lowest rating for Sunak since R&W began their Blue Wall polling.
And meanwhile, Sunak's approval rating in the same poll is -8, and Starmer's +5.
Watching Sunak at the Liaison Committee man he's going to be absolutely destroyed during a general election campaign and that's before lawyer Starmer tears him a new one.,
The big picture is a simple one. Two (I think) uncontroversial observations:
1 Rushi Sunak is horribly overpromoted. He might have been a decent PM ten years down the line, but right now, he isn't up to the job.
2 There is nobody in the Conservative Party who could do better than he is doing.
Therefore, Rishi, the Conservatives and the country face 12-18 months of painful stasis before the government finally falls over the cliff.
Short of a Simply Enormous Event, that's it, isn't it?
I spoke to a Brexiteer the other day, he reckons the Tories are out of power until they embrace Rejoin.
A sort of Nixon goes to China moment*.
Ironically the person he thinks who could pull this off is the person he rather despises , one Boris Johnson.
*I did point out joining the EC/EU has been standard Tory orthodoxy for most of the last 70 years. Brexit was the Nixon goes to China moment.
I am firmly of the opinion that, at some point during the next Labour decade, a Tory leadership contender will run on a Rejoin platform. And do surprisingly well. He/she probably isn't in government yet, and maybe not in Parliament.
To get a decade in power Labour will have to find a solution to the doctors 35% pay demand.
Don't pay it and get continuous NHS strikes, pay it and get equivalent pay demands from the rest of the public sector.
Perhaps they could pay everyone by taxing property but that will create other sets of people angry at losing out.
Juggling the different groups isn't going to be easy especially as those who gain forget quicker than those who lose out.
Paying something in between instead of paying the same people agency fees of £2k+ per shift to cover themselves striking will save money, improve retention and productivity.
What's something in between ?
20% ? 25% ? 30% ?
That demand for 35% is likely to increase with a Labour government.
Whatever the doctors are given will become the minimum demand for the rest of the public sector.
And why not - if the high paid get a big pay rise the low paid deserve the same.
Less than those numbers, at least per year. And anything over inflation should be for junior doctors (£40-60k) rather than the higher paid more experienced doctors who might be earning £100k+.
It would be better if we moved to make doctor pay significantly flatter over their careers rather than quite so back loaded, especially with long degrees and higher student debt, tax and house prices.
But regardless, paying regularly someone £2k to cover a single shift of a striking worker (possibly themself!) because we are not willing to give a £5k annual pay rise makes absolutely zero mathematical sense. I don't quite get why people think it saves us any taxpayer money.
Why would the doctors accept less than even 20% ?
It would be an admittance that their initial demands were based upon greed and lies and that all the damage they've done by striking was unnecessary.
As to the current costs well doesn't that apply to every dispute ? But the cost of giving way is in the further demands it prompts. In this case whatever the doctors get will be the immediate demand for the rest of the public sector.
I don't think it applies to every dispute at all. Sometimes employers have more power. But not when we need to recruit a load more people, the existing ones are leaving and we have a backlog of 7m operations.
We have just gone through a decade where a lot of public sector was heavily squeezed, initially correctly so, but it has increasingly become a doctrine done out of political belief rather than common sense and pragmatism. It is now hugely counter productive and a big part of why the government is failing.
But it always comes back to my initial point.
That if the doctors got their big pay rise then the rest of the public sector will want the same.
We can discuss the details of individual cases on the internet but in the real world it will be "they got X% so we want X%".
So its going to be strikes or more taxation.
Why shouldn't they get the same?
Why is it good enough to give double-digit pay rises to those on welfare but only 3-4% for those who work for a living like teachers?
How is it any more outrageous to be asking for more than inflation, when you're getting offered less than inflation?
The Government started this mess by dicking around and picking priority groups to pander to, which predominantly was those who aren't working because that's their client vote. When others are being treated better than you are, why shouldn't those who are working demand their slice too?
Responsible governance would have been to say "we're all in it together" and mean it, scrap the triple lock etc and have flat rates across the board - but instead some groups were pandered to and others told suck up nearly double-digit real terms pay cuts.
I agree - they should get the same.
Which is the problem PM Starmer will have:
Giving the doctors what they want means having to give everyone else the same which means more taxation on someone else plus private sector workers now being aggrieved.
Alternatively don't give the doctors what they want and have continuous strikes from them.
But. As the nurses have shown, folk get fed up of striking pretty soon. There won't be any prospect of doctors still striking this time next year.
And even if the doctors give up this year they haven't gone away and their pay demands will only grow.
They are not giving up, particularly with the refusal of the government to meet and negotiate. In my union (HCSA) today the Juniors voted 96% for a further 6 months of strikes.
Ironically, that's basically the government's remaining core vote.
So it is. What's the point of privatisting to the old fashioned railways? You can't have "London and North Eastern Railway" and "Great Western Railway" etc without at least ticket offices, even if the helpful porters and Passenger Luggage in Advance are no longer with us.
Has PB opined on the frankly lunatic idea to close all ticket offices?
This government should be put down, like a rabid dog.
It all adds to the impression of the gradual collapse of British public institutions. Not a great back drop for a government wanting to win an election, or at least mitigate a comprehensive defeat.
< You have to think that a party like the Conservatives will be in government again eventually. The relevant questions ought to be when and after what compromises?
And yet...
Every other time a party has really gone off the reservation in recent years (Labour under Foot or Corbyn, Conservatives under IDS) there has been enough ballast to stop it completely disconnecting from reality, and enough of a remnant (since it's been Bible Reference Day on PB) for the party to regrow in an electorally useful way.
This time... I'm not so sure. I want to think that the Conservative Wet tradition can regrow, but I fear that it's proved to be just too wet. My fear is that the triumph of Suella Braverman over the harmless Flick Drummond in the Battle for Fareham is a sign of where the Conservative Party is. And by the time it realises it needs saving, there won't be much left to save.
Please, pesuade me that I'm wrong.
Parties like to be in power - the Faustian deals they strike for a taste in power are remarkable to behold.
The Conservatives will eventually want power again and recognise the route back to that power is to stop chasing a world which no longer exists and start re-engaging with the world as it is.
Labour, after two terms, will have made its fair share of mistakes and enemies and those wishing to oppose the Government will need a vehicle for that opposition. It COULD be the Liberal Democrats (and nearly was in the Blair years) but it's likely after a second or perhaps third defeat, just as a man who keeps getting knocked out might decide boxing isn't the sport for him, the Conservatives might decide losing and ideological purity isn't as much fun as it seemed a few years earlier.
Re-designing Conservatism for the mid 21st century is going to be the intellectual challenge - the challenges of climate change, AI and the shifting tectonic plates of global alliances in a world (likely) dominated by the Sino-American conflict in the Pacific will all need thought.
All these tedious 'oh when will the Tories go back to the centre ground' posts, forgetting Sunak and Hunt already are relatively centrist Tory leaders yet again completely ignore the economy.
Yes, if we were in the late 1990s with low inflation, low tax and a growing economy for an incoming Labour government there might be little scope for a rightwing Tory opposition.
However we are facing the highest inflation since the 1970s, a decade which saw 3 changes of government, as well as frequent strikes. Governments all over the world are unpopular, it is the height of arrogance and complacency for Labour supporters here to think they will be in power for decades. Indeed they might be trailing in the polls within a year of election unless they get a grip on the economy!
Face it chum. Your partly is down the toilet and flushing it's own chain. It will be a long slow crawl back to electability, and not one via weird culture war stuff from the US right.
No, if Labour put up tax, inflation continues to rise, strikes get worse, interest rates climb further and growth slows I predict the Conservatives will be back ahead in the polls within a year of election defeat. No matter how rightwing their leader
Only the first of those is likely and the Tories are doing that anyway.
It turns out the last election was a good one to lose and the next will be a good one to win I reckon.
The underlying problems will not disappear - rather they're likely to worsen.
But the magic money tree will have gone - the next government is going to need skill and luck, likely a lot of skill and a lot of luck.
Watching Sunak at the Liaison Committee man he's going to be absolutely destroyed during a general election campaign and that's before lawyer Starmer tears him a new one.,
The big picture is a simple one. Two (I think) uncontroversial observations:
1 Rushi Sunak is horribly overpromoted. He might have been a decent PM ten years down the line, but right now, he isn't up to the job.
2 There is nobody in the Conservative Party who could do better than he is doing.
Therefore, Rishi, the Conservatives and the country face 12-18 months of painful stasis before the government finally falls over the cliff.
Short of a Simply Enormous Event, that's it, isn't it?
I spoke to a Brexiteer the other day, he reckons the Tories are out of power until they embrace Rejoin.
A sort of Nixon goes to China moment*.
Ironically the person he thinks who could pull this off is the person he rather despises , one Boris Johnson.
*I did point out joining the EC/EU has been standard Tory orthodoxy for most of the last 70 years. Brexit was the Nixon goes to China moment.
I am firmly of the opinion that, at some point during the next Labour decade, a Tory leadership contender will run on a Rejoin platform. And do surprisingly well. He/she probably isn't in government yet, and maybe not in Parliament.
To get a decade in power Labour will have to find a solution to the doctors 35% pay demand.
Don't pay it and get continuous NHS strikes, pay it and get equivalent pay demands from the rest of the public sector.
Perhaps they could pay everyone by taxing property but that will create other sets of people angry at losing out.
Juggling the different groups isn't going to be easy especially as those who gain forget quicker than those who lose out.
Paying something in between instead of paying the same people agency fees of £2k+ per shift to cover themselves striking will save money, improve retention and productivity.
What's something in between ?
20% ? 25% ? 30% ?
That demand for 35% is likely to increase with a Labour government.
Whatever the doctors are given will become the minimum demand for the rest of the public sector.
And why not - if the high paid get a big pay rise the low paid deserve the same.
Less than those numbers, at least per year. And anything over inflation should be for junior doctors (£40-60k) rather than the higher paid more experienced doctors who might be earning £100k+.
It would be better if we moved to make doctor pay significantly flatter over their careers rather than quite so back loaded, especially with long degrees and higher student debt, tax and house prices.
But regardless, paying regularly someone £2k to cover a single shift of a striking worker (possibly themself!) because we are not willing to give a £5k annual pay rise makes absolutely zero mathematical sense. I don't quite get why people think it saves us any taxpayer money.
Why would the doctors accept less than even 20% ?
It would be an admittance that their initial demands were based upon greed and lies and that all the damage they've done by striking was unnecessary.
As to the current costs well doesn't that apply to every dispute ? But the cost of giving way is in the further demands it prompts. In this case whatever the doctors get will be the immediate demand for the rest of the public sector.
I don't think it applies to every dispute at all. Sometimes employers have more power. But not when we need to recruit a load more people, the existing ones are leaving and we have a backlog of 7m operations.
We have just gone through a decade where a lot of public sector was heavily squeezed, initially correctly so, but it has increasingly become a doctrine done out of political belief rather than common sense and pragmatism. It is now hugely counter productive and a big part of why the government is failing.
But it always comes back to my initial point.
That if the doctors got their big pay rise then the rest of the public sector will want the same.
We can discuss the details of individual cases on the internet but in the real world it will be "they got X% so we want X%".
So its going to be strikes or more taxation.
Why shouldn't they get the same?
Why is it good enough to give double-digit pay rises to those on welfare but only 3-4% for those who work for a living like teachers?
How is it any more outrageous to be asking for more than inflation, when you're getting offered less than inflation?
The Government started this mess by dicking around and picking priority groups to pander to, which predominantly was those who aren't working because that's their client vote. When others are being treated better than you are, why shouldn't those who are working demand their slice too?
Responsible governance would have been to say "we're all in it together" and mean it, scrap the triple lock etc and have flat rates across the board - but instead some groups were pandered to and others told suck up nearly double-digit real terms pay cuts.
I agree - they should get the same.
Which is the problem PM Starmer will have:
Giving the doctors what they want means having to give everyone else the same which means more taxation on someone else plus private sector workers now being aggrieved.
Alternatively don't give the doctors what they want and have continuous strikes from them.
But. As the nurses have shown, folk get fed up of striking pretty soon. There won't be any prospect of doctors still striking this time next year.
And even if the doctors give up this year they haven't gone away and their pay demands will only grow.
They are not giving up, particularly with the refusal of the government to meet and negotiate. In my union (HCSA) today the Juniors voted 96% for a further 6 months of strikes.
Has PB opined on the frankly lunatic idea to close all ticket offices?
This government should be put down, like a rabid dog.
In theory it's cost saving - until the disability act waves its head and points out the scale of the problem it creates when you can't guarantee where a member of staff will always be...
Has PB opined on the frankly lunatic idea to close all ticket offices?
This government should be put down, like a rabid dog.
It all adds to the impression of the gradual collapse of British public institutions. Not a great back drop for a government wanting to win an election, or at least mitigate a comprehensive defeat.
It sometimes feels like the current Conservative Party look at every positive aspect of current Britain and think to themselves "How can we f**k this up?".
It's quite bizarre.
They've got themselves a few women leaders, first S.Asian Pm etc etc etc, and then... "Why not shoot cow poo at the Cornish whilst we burn the aspirational youth?!?!?"
A deal has been reached for Ursula von der Leyen to become the next Nato Secretary General and the first woman to head the alliance, The National understands.
The year-long extension of incumbent Jens Stoltenberg’s tenure has been arranged so Ms von der Leyen can finish her five-year term as President of the European Commission in 2024, a Nato insider has said.
As predicted by pb's own @Dura_Ace iirc (or at least, he noted the strange coincidence of JS's extension and UvdL becoming available).
A German aristocrat being parachuted into a job despite little personal achievement or democratic mandate in her history. I suppose it isn't quite as egregious as how she got the EU job. There she was given it in a backroom deal over the rules that got Juncker the job.
She was Germany's defence minister and has won as many elections as Rishi Sunak. There was no rule forcing member states to nominate ... let's check... Manfred Weber (!) as President of the Commission, for the very good reason that the national governments never ceded their rights enjoyed under law.
Hang on a minute. At the time when every major UK party protested to Juncker, we were told that it didn't matter he was a drunken muppet... he was supposedly the duly elected Spitzenkandidat, so the issue couldn't be revisited.
Then of course the next election Germany didn't like the Spitzenkandidat so they quickly switched him out. The contrast was such clear example of how the EU was always one rule for the UK and a different one for France/Germany.
So what. Given the choice the UK chose a bloke who drove around a large town during lockdown BECAUSE, not IN SPITE OF, the fact that he didn't think he could see well enough to drive. Jump up and down about that instead of crocodile tears for the larger neighbour.
This is whataboutism of the highest order. You can't defend the obvious hypocrisy of the EU system of choosing its head of governmemt so you try to distract with some random UK civil servant.
You didn't like Juncker - and by that, I mean not "everyone", but specifically you right-wing Tories. Then when you guys got the whip hand at home, you appointed Pound-Shop Peter Thiel with a sideline in cavorting with Russia. I think it's a decently representative case of motes and beams.
You don't have to be a right-wing Tory to despise Juncker, surely? The man was (is) a truly repellant excuse for a human being, ran Luxembourg as a tax haven for all sorts of dodgy multinationals, practised cronyism on a scale that would have made Nicky Morgan blink and approximately as democratic in his behaviour as Trump - arguably, less so given AFAIK Trump was never accused of using the Secret Service to tap Biden's phone.
That's even before we talk about his 'sciatica.'
You don't have to, but those ones do.
While he doesn't have the worldly experience and geopolitical leadership skills of a schoolteacher, neither does anybody else, by all their accounts.
Are you saying that you are perfectly OK with the EU being led by somebody like that?
Because if so I would advise you to get your moral compass recalibrated.
Being pissed and self serving never did Churchill any harm.
Phew. I was worried about an inevitable stroke and/or heart attack until now.
I just got an email inviting me to invest in What 3 Words.
avoid.like.plague
I actually made that call last weekend: 999, "Police", "Mountain Rescue please".
Provided grid reference with OS Locate app (download it now!). Then received a text message from Police Scotland that pinged my phone and sent the same grid reference again to Mountain Rescue.
They hate W3W. Rarely get all three of the words, particularly over a radio, and have to guess. Almost always used by people who only have a vague idea of what mountain they are on, so impossible to scan a W3W map and work it out.
Anyway, top tip I learnt. If very windy, chuck your jacket over your head so you can get your message across. Simple, but I didn't think of it till the MR guy asked me too. Also, bivvy bags are great.
No, two different issues here. There's no money in it but it's still a brilliant idea because it is inherently error correcting. A word can only be confused with one or two other words, a 6 digit map ref is no more or less likely than any other 6 digit number.
If you are calling out mountain rescue in this weather, either you had really bad luck or you are not much of an oracle on safety issues anyway
May not have been for himself. I've called for assistance on mountains twice, neither time for me.
(Both old fashioned grid references from a paper map)
I've never had to call out mountain rescue, but I have once had to persuade someone they were on the wrong hill, and heading in totally the wrong direction. They did not want to believe me, despite my GPS and the landmarks I was pointing out.
Important lessons for us all from that, perhaps. There are times we believe we're right, even when all the evidence says otherwise.
I think there's a bit in Barry Pilton's 'One Man and his Bog, where he describes his first night on walking the Pennine Way. "I worked out how to use my compass, and as the sun set in the north..."
The other one is to take it all seriously. Even when it seems like a walk i the park
I went out for all day walk in the Cotswolds - cross country over footpaths. By the end of it, I given away water to 2 different utterly exhausted people.
Note - flip flops are the least useful form of footwear for walking. At least unless your feet are actually made of shoes leather. I had some plasters in my usual walking bag - purely by accident. They helped one of the people, as well.
I went up Scafell Pike last May and everything I read about it was all "the weather closes in quickly" etc. etc.
What they didn't say was "very occasionally, it's a brilliant sunny day, don't forget sun cream".
Last time I was on Pen y Fan, en route to a friend's party in a cottage near by, we camped on the high hills, and woke in the sun to see the sea of mist in the valley below, and walked along the ridge to Pen y Fan where there was a young lady with a bikini, woolly socks, and - sensibly - boots standing on the trig point. But on other occasions ... you'd be lucky to see the trig point.
Oh, there's always a young lady in a bikini, woolly socks and boots at the trig point. Most people just don't notice due to the mist/rain reducing visibility
Has PB opined on the frankly lunatic idea to close all ticket offices?
This government should be put down, like a rabid dog.
It all adds to the impression of the gradual collapse of British public institutions. Not a great back drop for a government wanting to win an election, or at least mitigate a comprehensive defeat.
It sometimes feels like the current Conservative Party look at every positive aspect of current Britain and think to themselves "How can we f**k this up?".
It's quite bizarre.
They've got themselves a few women leaders, first S.Asian Pm etc etc etc, and then... "Why not shoot cow poo at the Cornish whilst we burn the aspirational youth?!?!?"
Too much of a management consultant mentality.
I've said before the country needs leaders who have worn ppe not studied PPE.
Watching Sunak at the Liaison Committee man he's going to be absolutely destroyed during a general election campaign and that's before lawyer Starmer tears him a new one.,
The big picture is a simple one. Two (I think) uncontroversial observations:
1 Rushi Sunak is horribly overpromoted. He might have been a decent PM ten years down the line, but right now, he isn't up to the job.
2 There is nobody in the Conservative Party who could do better than he is doing.
Therefore, Rishi, the Conservatives and the country face 12-18 months of painful stasis before the government finally falls over the cliff.
Short of a Simply Enormous Event, that's it, isn't it?
I spoke to a Brexiteer the other day, he reckons the Tories are out of power until they embrace Rejoin.
A sort of Nixon goes to China moment*.
Ironically the person he thinks who could pull this off is the person he rather despises , one Boris Johnson.
*I did point out joining the EC/EU has been standard Tory orthodoxy for most of the last 70 years. Brexit was the Nixon goes to China moment.
If the Tories embraced Rejoin they would cease to be the main party of the right in the UK, RefUK under a newly returned Farage would replace them as the main right of centre party and opposition to Labour.
Even Labour wouldn't embrace Rejoin now because of the redwall, at most they would consider EEA if they win and are then re elected.
The only UK wide party whose voter coalition would allow them to consider Rejoin are the LDs you vote for
The Tories are on course for ceasing to be the main party of the right if they embrace the blood and soil nationalism of the New Tories.
No they aren't, they are still about 25-30% with another 5-10% voting Reform.
Embrace Rejoin and they would collapse to 10% or less, probably fall to even fewer seats than the SNP and LDs under FPTP, Reform would get 30-35% and become the main opposition to Starmer's Labour government
It will be interesting to see which way the Tories go after the coming defeat.
Ron De Santis is banning books and attacking Disney for the crime of being in the 21st century. And the leading Tory in leadership betting is happy to stand right beside him declaring herself at one with all that agenda. In the history of the Conservative Party, have they ever been so in bed with nonsense coming out of the US right wing, as might be about to happen?
Loopyness on Social media was never such a danger to UK politics in the past was it? Like what it’s doing to the republicans, it can turn the UKs default party of government into a factionally riven, out of touch party no longer so many’s choice for strong government.
But there’s more factions than that. Truss won the last proper leadership election because members preferred her slash and burn approach to taxation and government spending. And despite Truss leading it, it’s still a faction with traction - especially as the current faction, Hunt and Sunak’s carefully hands off management of UK decline, won’t be so popular after the defeat.
And then there’s the Boris faction, that’s not simply about Boris but all the embrace the freedoms of Brexit so everyone in UK is high skilled and high payed arguments of frosty the no man, and others like group happy to sign their names on the B Ark manifest yesterday with pull up drawbridge to make Britain Great Again, a faction supported by every daily telegraph columnist, editorial, as well as the Mail and Express. How influential will this faction be post election? And just how damaging will it be to getting Tories back to centre ground and winning again?
TSE is right, being the Brexit Party, the enablers of brexit, leaving us with a rock hard brexit not even a softer one, is a game changer for the Tories in UK politics. A quick revival, or even any revival using current name and branding, and we got Brexit done logo, might be hard work.
Down to 100 to 150 MPs and ridden by factional infighting and policies they can’t rally behind, will the Tories enjoy government limousines ever again?
You have to think that a party like the Conservatives will be in government again eventually. The relevant questions ought to be when and after what compromises?
And yet...
Every other time a party has really gone off the reservation in recent years (Labour under Foot or Corbyn, Conservatives under IDS) there has been enough ballast to stop it completely disconnecting from reality, and enough of a remnant (since it's been Bible Reference Day on PB) for the party to regrow in an electorally useful way.
This time... I'm not so sure. I want to think that the Conservative Wet tradition can regrow, but I fear that it's proved to be just too wet. My fear is that the triumph of Suella Braverman over the harmless Flick Drummond in the Battle for Fareham is a sign of where the Conservative Party is. And by the time it realises it needs saving, there won't be much left to save.
Please, pesuade me that I'm wrong.
The reality is that whether wets or drys win out in the Tories, we won't see Trump/DeSantis-style semi-fascism in the UK. The US has a long standing and broadly-based racial angst from the history of slavery and segregation. It's deep-seated Protestant revival culture also embedded a culture of being the Chosen Few against the evil others and also a mindset that salvation from all wrongs exists just around the corner. And of course the overall religiosity creates a less rationalist culture, open to all sorts of conspiracy theories.
The UK on the other hand inherits a culture founded on the compromise of the Elizabethan Settlement. And because the British Empire's racism was primarily something practice in the colonies and not at home, cultural racism never really embedded here as a major, long-lasting trend.
Sorry to moan but can we not discuss something important?
Ukrainian intelligence stating that Russian forces are evacuating from Enerhodar and even Melitopol (really?). Major concern they are going to do something crazy at the NPP. I cannot understand what the west is doing. There was no serious response to the blowing of the Kahkovka dam, even a lack of attribution to Russia! Many of the leading analysts also seem to be avoiding the subject. Am I missing something here?
Watching Sunak at the Liaison Committee man he's going to be absolutely destroyed during a general election campaign and that's before lawyer Starmer tears him a new one.,
The big picture is a simple one. Two (I think) uncontroversial observations:
1 Rushi Sunak is horribly overpromoted. He might have been a decent PM ten years down the line, but right now, he isn't up to the job.
2 There is nobody in the Conservative Party who could do better than he is doing.
Therefore, Rishi, the Conservatives and the country face 12-18 months of painful stasis before the government finally falls over the cliff.
Short of a Simply Enormous Event, that's it, isn't it?
I spoke to a Brexiteer the other day, he reckons the Tories are out of power until they embrace Rejoin.
A sort of Nixon goes to China moment*.
Ironically the person he thinks who could pull this off is the person he rather despises , one Boris Johnson.
*I did point out joining the EC/EU has been standard Tory orthodoxy for most of the last 70 years. Brexit was the Nixon goes to China moment.
If the Tories embraced Rejoin they would cease to be the main party of the right in the UK, RefUK under a newly returned Farage would replace them as the main right of centre party and opposition to Labour.
Even Labour wouldn't embrace Rejoin now because of the redwall, at most they would consider EEA if they win and are then re elected.
The only UK wide party whose voter coalition would allow them to consider Rejoin are the LDs you vote for
The Tories are on course for ceasing to be the main party of the right if they embrace the blood and soil nationalism of the New Tories.
No they aren't, they are still about 25-30% with another 5-10% voting Reform.
Embrace Rejoin and they would collapse to 10% or less, probably fall to even fewer seats than the SNP and LDs under FPTP, Reform would get 30-35% and become the main opposition to Starmer's Labour government
I just can’t envisage any scenario where Reform would get 30-35%. Do you have any evidence for your assertion?
He loves Reform.
That is it.
They are a pathetic joke of a party, only HYUFD takes them seriously.
HYUFD can't imaging people continuing to follow a Conservative government if they changed stance on the EU, despite him having done exactly that.
76% of current Conservative voters voted Leave, they would not stick with a party that pushed Rejoin.
Watching Sunak at the Liaison Committee man he's going to be absolutely destroyed during a general election campaign and that's before lawyer Starmer tears him a new one.,
The big picture is a simple one. Two (I think) uncontroversial observations:
1 Rushi Sunak is horribly overpromoted. He might have been a decent PM ten years down the line, but right now, he isn't up to the job.
2 There is nobody in the Conservative Party who could do better than he is doing.
Therefore, Rishi, the Conservatives and the country face 12-18 months of painful stasis before the government finally falls over the cliff.
Short of a Simply Enormous Event, that's it, isn't it?
I spoke to a Brexiteer the other day, he reckons the Tories are out of power until they embrace Rejoin.
A sort of Nixon goes to China moment*.
Ironically the person he thinks who could pull this off is the person he rather despises , one Boris Johnson.
*I did point out joining the EC/EU has been standard Tory orthodoxy for most of the last 70 years. Brexit was the Nixon goes to China moment.
If the Tories embraced Rejoin they would cease to be the main party of the right in the UK, RefUK under a newly returned Farage would replace them as the main right of centre party and opposition to Labour.
Even Labour wouldn't embrace Rejoin now because of the redwall, at most they would consider EEA if they win and are then re elected.
The only UK wide party whose voter coalition would allow them to consider Rejoin are the LDs you vote for
The Tories are on course for ceasing to be the main party of the right if they embrace the blood and soil nationalism of the New Tories.
No they aren't, they are still about 25-30% with another 5-10% voting Reform.
Embrace Rejoin and they would collapse to 10% or less, probably fall to even fewer seats than the SNP and LDs under FPTP, Reform would get 30-35% and become the main opposition to Starmer's Labour government
It will be interesting to see which way the Tories go after the coming defeat.
Ron De Santis is banning books and attacking Disney for the crime of being in the 21st century. And the leading Tory in leadership betting is happy to stand right beside him declaring herself at one with all that agenda. In the history of the Conservative Party, have they ever been so in bed with nonsense coming out of the US right wing, as might be about to happen?
Loopyness on Social media was never such a danger to UK politics in the past was it? Like what it’s doing to the republicans, it can turn the UKs default party of government into a factionally riven, out of touch party no longer so many’s choice for strong government.
But there’s more factions than that. Truss won the last proper leadership election because members preferred her slash and burn approach to taxation and government spending. And despite Truss leading it, it’s still a faction with traction - especially as the current faction, Hunt and Sunak’s carefully hands off management of UK decline, won’t be so popular after the defeat.
And then there’s the Boris faction, that’s not simply about Boris but all the embrace the freedoms of Brexit so everyone in UK is high skilled and high payed arguments of frosty the no man, and others like group happy to sign their names on the B Ark manifest yesterday with pull up drawbridge to make Britain Great Again, a faction supported by every daily telegraph columnist, editorial, as well as the Mail and Express. How influential will this faction be post election? And just how damaging will it be to getting Tories back to centre ground and winning again?
TSE is right, being the Brexit Party, the enablers of brexit, leaving us with a rock hard brexit not even a softer one, is a game changer for the Tories in UK politics. A quick revival, or even any revival using current name and branding, and we got Brexit done logo, might be hard work.
Down to 100 to 150 MPs and ridden by factional infighting and policies they can’t rally behind, will the Tories enjoy government limousines ever again?
You have to think that a party like the Conservatives will be in government again eventually. The relevant questions ought to be when and after what compromises?
And yet...
Every other time a party has really gone off the reservation in recent years (Labour under Foot or Corbyn, Conservatives under IDS) there has been enough ballast to stop it completely disconnecting from reality, and enough of a remnant (since it's been Bible Reference Day on PB) for the party to regrow in an electorally useful way.
This time... I'm not so sure. I want to think that the Conservative Wet tradition can regrow, but I fear that it's proved to be just too wet. My fear is that the triumph of Suella Braverman over the harmless Flick Drummond in the Battle for Fareham is a sign of where the Conservative Party is. And by the time it realises it needs saving, there won't be much left to save.
Please, pesuade me that I'm wrong.
The reality is that whether wets or drys win out in the Tories, we won't see Trump/DeSantis-style semi-fascism in the UK. The US has a long standing and broadly-based racial angst from the history of slavery and segregation. It's deep-seated Protestant revival culture also embedded a culture of being the Chosen Few against the evil others and also a mindset that salvation from all wrongs exists just around the corner. And of course the overall religiosity creates a less rationalist culture, open to all sorts of conspiracy theories.
The UK on the other hand inherits a culture founded on the compromise of the Elizabethan Settlement. And because the British Empire's racism was primarily something practice in the colonies and not at home, cultural racism never really embedded here as a major, long-lasting trend.
You write as if the USA which had slavery on its home ground until the 1860s is the only country that has a chance of going semi-fascist in the near future. Italy? France? Several countries went full-on fascist last century too that had never had much slavery.
Watching Sunak at the Liaison Committee man he's going to be absolutely destroyed during a general election campaign and that's before lawyer Starmer tears him a new one.,
The big picture is a simple one. Two (I think) uncontroversial observations:
1 Rushi Sunak is horribly overpromoted. He might have been a decent PM ten years down the line, but right now, he isn't up to the job.
2 There is nobody in the Conservative Party who could do better than he is doing.
Therefore, Rishi, the Conservatives and the country face 12-18 months of painful stasis before the government finally falls over the cliff.
Short of a Simply Enormous Event, that's it, isn't it?
I spoke to a Brexiteer the other day, he reckons the Tories are out of power until they embrace Rejoin.
A sort of Nixon goes to China moment*.
Ironically the person he thinks who could pull this off is the person he rather despises , one Boris Johnson.
*I did point out joining the EC/EU has been standard Tory orthodoxy for most of the last 70 years. Brexit was the Nixon goes to China moment.
If the Tories embraced Rejoin they would cease to be the main party of the right in the UK, RefUK under a newly returned Farage would replace them as the main right of centre party and opposition to Labour.
Even Labour wouldn't embrace Rejoin now because of the redwall, at most they would consider EEA if they win and are then re elected.
The only UK wide party whose voter coalition would allow them to consider Rejoin are the LDs you vote for
The Tories are on course for ceasing to be the main party of the right if they embrace the blood and soil nationalism of the New Tories.
No they aren't, they are still about 25-30% with another 5-10% voting Reform.
Embrace Rejoin and they would collapse to 10% or less, probably fall to even fewer seats than the SNP and LDs under FPTP, Reform would get 30-35% and become the main opposition to Starmer's Labour government
It will be interesting to see which way the Tories go after the coming defeat.
Ron De Santis is banning books and attacking Disney for the crime of being in the 21st century. And the leading Tory in leadership betting is happy to stand right beside him declaring herself at one with all that agenda. In the history of the Conservative Party, have they ever been so in bed with nonsense coming out of the US right wing, as might be about to happen?
Loopyness on Social media was never such a danger to UK politics in the past was it? Like what it’s doing to the republicans, it can turn the UKs default party of government into a factionally riven, out of touch party no longer so many’s choice for strong government.
But there’s more factions than that. Truss won the last proper leadership election because members preferred her slash and burn approach to taxation and government spending. And despite Truss leading it, it’s still a faction with traction - especially as the current faction, Hunt and Sunak’s carefully hands off management of UK decline, won’t be so popular after the defeat.
And then there’s the Boris faction, that’s not simply about Boris but all the embrace the freedoms of Brexit so everyone in UK is high skilled and high payed arguments of frosty the no man, and others like group happy to sign their names on the B Ark manifest yesterday with pull up drawbridge to make Britain Great Again, a faction supported by every daily telegraph columnist, editorial, as well as the Mail and Express. How influential will this faction be post election? And just how damaging will it be to getting Tories back to centre ground and winning again?
TSE is right, being the Brexit Party, the enablers of brexit, leaving us with a rock hard brexit not even a softer one, is a game changer for the Tories in UK politics. A quick revival, or even any revival using current name and branding, and we got Brexit done logo, might be hard work.
Down to 100 to 150 MPs and ridden by factional infighting and policies they can’t rally behind, will the Tories enjoy government limousines ever again?
You have to think that a party like the Conservatives will be in government again eventually. The relevant questions ought to be when and after what compromises?
And yet...
Every other time a party has really gone off the reservation in recent years (Labour under Foot or Corbyn, Conservatives under IDS) there has been enough ballast to stop it completely disconnecting from reality, and enough of a remnant (since it's been Bible Reference Day on PB) for the party to regrow in an electorally useful way.
This time... I'm not so sure. I want to think that the Conservative Wet tradition can regrow, but I fear that it's proved to be just too wet. My fear is that the triumph of Suella Braverman over the harmless Flick Drummond in the Battle for Fareham is a sign of where the Conservative Party is. And by the time it realises it needs saving, there won't be much left to save.
Please, pesuade me that I'm wrong.
The reality is that whether wets or drys win out in the Tories, we won't see Trump/DeSantis-style semi-fascism in the UK. The US has a long standing and broadly-based racial angst from the history of slavery and segregation. It's deep-seated Protestant revival culture also embedded a culture of being the Chosen Few against the evil others and also a mindset that salvation from all wrongs exists just around the corner. And of course the overall religiosity creates a less rationalist culture, open to all sorts of conspiracy theories.
The UK on the other hand inherits a culture founded on the compromise of the Elizabethan Settlement. And because the British Empire's racism was primarily something practice in the colonies and not at home, cultural racism never really embedded here as a major, long-lasting trend.
No it never did, but sadly you do see American-style racism being imported by some, even on this site.
The internet is erasing the line of traditional British politics and bleeding some American cultural problems into this country. Ironically often by those claiming and failing to represent "British values".
Sorry to moan but can we not discuss something important?
Ukrainian intelligence stating that Russian forces are evacuating from Enerhodar and even Melitopol (really?). Major concern they are going to do something crazy at the NPP. I cannot understand what the west is doing. There was no serious response to the blowing of the Kahkovka dam, even a lack of attribution to Russia! Many of the leading analysts also seem to be avoiding the subject. Am I missing something here?
For all his flaws, Boris Johnson would be a better person to have leading the UK at this time than Rishi Sunak. The West needs someone less passive than Joe Biden.
This 4th of July, it's high time we recognize that the US exists on stolen Indigenous land and commit to returning it.
I don't think Europe has room to take in all Americans of European ancestry if all US land is returned to Native Indians who are only a small percentage of the US population now anyway
This 4th of July, it's high time we recognize that the US exists on stolen Indigenous land and commit to returning it.
I don't think Europe has room to take in all Americans of European ancestry if all US land is returned to Native Indians who are only a small percentage of the US population now anyway
Don't misunderstand, I agree with williamglenn, but... why would you assume that changing ownership would mean expulsions?
As all US land was originally owned by Native Indians, non Indian US citizens would lose all property rights if restored to them absolutely
Watching Sunak at the Liaison Committee man he's going to be absolutely destroyed during a general election campaign and that's before lawyer Starmer tears him a new one.,
The big picture is a simple one. Two (I think) uncontroversial observations:
1 Rushi Sunak is horribly overpromoted. He might have been a decent PM ten years down the line, but right now, he isn't up to the job.
2 There is nobody in the Conservative Party who could do better than he is doing.
Therefore, Rishi, the Conservatives and the country face 12-18 months of painful stasis before the government finally falls over the cliff.
Short of a Simply Enormous Event, that's it, isn't it?
I spoke to a Brexiteer the other day, he reckons the Tories are out of power until they embrace Rejoin.
A sort of Nixon goes to China moment*.
Ironically the person he thinks who could pull this off is the person he rather despises , one Boris Johnson.
*I did point out joining the EC/EU has been standard Tory orthodoxy for most of the last 70 years. Brexit was the Nixon goes to China moment.
If the Tories embraced Rejoin they would cease to be the main party of the right in the UK, RefUK under a newly returned Farage would replace them as the main right of centre party and opposition to Labour.
Even Labour wouldn't embrace Rejoin now because of the redwall, at most they would consider EEA if they win and are then re elected.
The only UK wide party whose voter coalition would allow them to consider Rejoin are the LDs you vote for
The Tories are on course for ceasing to be the main party of the right if they embrace the blood and soil nationalism of the New Tories.
No they aren't, they are still about 25-30% with another 5-10% voting Reform.
Embrace Rejoin and they would collapse to 10% or less, probably fall to even fewer seats than the SNP and LDs under FPTP, Reform would get 30-35% and become the main opposition to Starmer's Labour government
It will be interesting to see which way the Tories go after the coming defeat.
Ron De Santis is banning books and attacking Disney for the crime of being in the 21st century. And the leading Tory in leadership betting is happy to stand right beside him declaring herself at one with all that agenda. In the history of the Conservative Party, have they ever been so in bed with nonsense coming out of the US right wing, as might be about to happen?
Loopyness on Social media was never such a danger to UK politics in the past was it? Like what it’s doing to the republicans, it can turn the UKs default party of government into a factionally riven, out of touch party no longer so many’s choice for strong government.
But there’s more factions than that. Truss won the last proper leadership election because members preferred her slash and burn approach to taxation and government spending. And despite Truss leading it, it’s still a faction with traction - especially as the current faction, Hunt and Sunak’s carefully hands off management of UK decline, won’t be so popular after the defeat.
And then there’s the Boris faction, that’s not simply about Boris but all the embrace the freedoms of Brexit so everyone in UK is high skilled and high payed arguments of frosty the no man, and others like group happy to sign their names on the B Ark manifest yesterday with pull up drawbridge to make Britain Great Again, a faction supported by every daily telegraph columnist, editorial, as well as the Mail and Express. How influential will this faction be post election? And just how damaging will it be to getting Tories back to centre ground and winning again?
TSE is right, being the Brexit Party, the enablers of brexit, leaving us with a rock hard brexit not even a softer one, is a game changer for the Tories in UK politics. A quick revival, or even any revival using current name and branding, and we got Brexit done logo, might be hard work.
Down to 100 to 150 MPs and ridden by factional infighting and policies they can’t rally behind, will the Tories enjoy government limousines ever again?
You have to think that a party like the Conservatives will be in government again eventually. The relevant questions ought to be when and after what compromises?
And yet...
Every other time a party has really gone off the reservation in recent years (Labour under Foot or Corbyn, Conservatives under IDS) there has been enough ballast to stop it completely disconnecting from reality, and enough of a remnant (since it's been Bible Reference Day on PB) for the party to regrow in an electorally useful way.
This time... I'm not so sure. I want to think that the Conservative Wet tradition can regrow, but I fear that it's proved to be just too wet. My fear is that the triumph of Suella Braverman over the harmless Flick Drummond in the Battle for Fareham is a sign of where the Conservative Party is. And by the time it realises it needs saving, there won't be much left to save.
Please, pesuade me that I'm wrong.
The reality is that whether wets or drys win out in the Tories, we won't see Trump/DeSantis-style semi-fascism in the UK. The US has a long standing and broadly-based racial angst from the history of slavery and segregation. It's deep-seated Protestant revival culture also embedded a culture of being the Chosen Few against the evil others and also a mindset that salvation from all wrongs exists just around the corner. And of course the overall religiosity creates a less rationalist culture, open to all sorts of conspiracy theories.
The UK on the other hand inherits a culture founded on the compromise of the Elizabethan Settlement. And because the British Empire's racism was primarily something practice in the colonies and not at home, cultural racism never really embedded here as a major, long-lasting trend.
No it never did, but sadly you do see American-style racism being imported by some, even on this site.
The internet is erasing the line of traditional British politics and bleeding some American cultural problems into this country. Ironically often by those claiming and failing to represent "British values".
One of the more bizarre things is people cosplaying they're Americans and trying to bring American problems into a UK context.
Its not as if we haven't got enough issues of our own people can discuss.
Watching Sunak at the Liaison Committee man he's going to be absolutely destroyed during a general election campaign and that's before lawyer Starmer tears him a new one.,
The big picture is a simple one. Two (I think) uncontroversial observations:
1 Rushi Sunak is horribly overpromoted. He might have been a decent PM ten years down the line, but right now, he isn't up to the job.
2 There is nobody in the Conservative Party who could do better than he is doing.
Therefore, Rishi, the Conservatives and the country face 12-18 months of painful stasis before the government finally falls over the cliff.
Short of a Simply Enormous Event, that's it, isn't it?
I spoke to a Brexiteer the other day, he reckons the Tories are out of power until they embrace Rejoin.
A sort of Nixon goes to China moment*.
Ironically the person he thinks who could pull this off is the person he rather despises , one Boris Johnson.
*I did point out joining the EC/EU has been standard Tory orthodoxy for most of the last 70 years. Brexit was the Nixon goes to China moment.
If the Tories embraced Rejoin they would cease to be the main party of the right in the UK, RefUK under a newly returned Farage would replace them as the main right of centre party and opposition to Labour.
Even Labour wouldn't embrace Rejoin now because of the redwall, at most they would consider EEA if they win and are then re elected.
The only UK wide party whose voter coalition would allow them to consider Rejoin are the LDs you vote for
The Tories are on course for ceasing to be the main party of the right if they embrace the blood and soil nationalism of the New Tories.
No they aren't, they are still about 25-30% with another 5-10% voting Reform.
Embrace Rejoin and they would collapse to 10% or less, probably fall to even fewer seats than the SNP and LDs under FPTP, Reform would get 30-35% and become the main opposition to Starmer's Labour government
I just can’t envisage any scenario where Reform would get 30-35%. Do you have any evidence for your assertion?
He loves Reform.
That is it.
They are a pathetic joke of a party, only HYUFD takes them seriously.
HYUFD can't imaging people continuing to follow a Conservative government if they changed stance on the EU, despite him having done exactly that.
76% of current Conservative voters voted Leave, they would not stick with a party that pushed Rejoin.
QED by your logic of everyone in a class of voter being the same, voting Reform is the preserve of Remain Tories.
Ha ha ha ha ha.
You are the man who DID vote for Farage in the 2019 European elections when he got 30% of the vote while I still voted for May's Tories even when they got just 9% of the vote.
Watching Sunak at the Liaison Committee man he's going to be absolutely destroyed during a general election campaign and that's before lawyer Starmer tears him a new one.,
The big picture is a simple one. Two (I think) uncontroversial observations:
1 Rushi Sunak is horribly overpromoted. He might have been a decent PM ten years down the line, but right now, he isn't up to the job.
2 There is nobody in the Conservative Party who could do better than he is doing.
Therefore, Rishi, the Conservatives and the country face 12-18 months of painful stasis before the government finally falls over the cliff.
Short of a Simply Enormous Event, that's it, isn't it?
I spoke to a Brexiteer the other day, he reckons the Tories are out of power until they embrace Rejoin.
A sort of Nixon goes to China moment*.
Ironically the person he thinks who could pull this off is the person he rather despises , one Boris Johnson.
*I did point out joining the EC/EU has been standard Tory orthodoxy for most of the last 70 years. Brexit was the Nixon goes to China moment.
If the Tories embraced Rejoin they would cease to be the main party of the right in the UK, RefUK under a newly returned Farage would replace them as the main right of centre party and opposition to Labour.
Even Labour wouldn't embrace Rejoin now because of the redwall, at most they would consider EEA if they win and are then re elected.
The only UK wide party whose voter coalition would allow them to consider Rejoin are the LDs you vote for
The Tories are on course for ceasing to be the main party of the right if they embrace the blood and soil nationalism of the New Tories.
No they aren't, they are still about 25-30% with another 5-10% voting Reform.
Embrace Rejoin and they would collapse to 10% or less, probably fall to even fewer seats than the SNP and LDs under FPTP, Reform would get 30-35% and become the main opposition to Starmer's Labour government
I just can’t envisage any scenario where Reform would get 30-35%. Do you have any evidence for your assertion?
He loves Reform.
That is it.
They are a pathetic joke of a party, only HYUFD takes them seriously.
HYUFD can't imaging people continuing to follow a Conservative government if they changed stance on the EU, despite him having done exactly that.
76% of current Conservative voters voted Leave, they would not stick with a party that pushed Rejoin.
QED by your logic of everyone in a class of voter being the same, voting Reform is the preserve of Remain Tories.
Ha ha ha ha ha.
You are the man who DID vote for Farage in the 2019 European elections when he got 30% of the vote while I still voted for May's Tories even when they got just 9% of the vote.
What utter hypocrisy!
I don't know how to break it down so it gets through your thick skull but the 2019 European Parliament elections were not a real election, and was not electing anyone to represent us in Westminster Parliament. How many of the people "elected" in 2019 are still serving their term they were elected to? It was a protest election, at a vote that should never have happened as we should have left already.
That doesn't mean people who voted to protest in 2019 would vote Reform in 2024 now that Brexit is done.
You are just again showing you can't understand the reason people actually voted the way they did. There is no great swell of people just eagerly waiting to vote for Reform, it is not happening.
Watching Sunak at the Liaison Committee man he's going to be absolutely destroyed during a general election campaign and that's before lawyer Starmer tears him a new one.,
The big picture is a simple one. Two (I think) uncontroversial observations:
1 Rushi Sunak is horribly overpromoted. He might have been a decent PM ten years down the line, but right now, he isn't up to the job.
2 There is nobody in the Conservative Party who could do better than he is doing.
Therefore, Rishi, the Conservatives and the country face 12-18 months of painful stasis before the government finally falls over the cliff.
Short of a Simply Enormous Event, that's it, isn't it?
I spoke to a Brexiteer the other day, he reckons the Tories are out of power until they embrace Rejoin.
A sort of Nixon goes to China moment*.
Ironically the person he thinks who could pull this off is the person he rather despises , one Boris Johnson.
*I did point out joining the EC/EU has been standard Tory orthodoxy for most of the last 70 years. Brexit was the Nixon goes to China moment.
If the Tories embraced Rejoin they would cease to be the main party of the right in the UK, RefUK under a newly returned Farage would replace them as the main right of centre party and opposition to Labour.
Even Labour wouldn't embrace Rejoin now because of the redwall, at most they would consider EEA if they win and are then re elected.
The only UK wide party whose voter coalition would allow them to consider Rejoin are the LDs you vote for
The Tories are on course for ceasing to be the main party of the right if they embrace the blood and soil nationalism of the New Tories.
No they aren't, they are still about 25-30% with another 5-10% voting Reform.
Embrace Rejoin and they would collapse to 10% or less, probably fall to even fewer seats than the SNP and LDs under FPTP, Reform would get 30-35% and become the main opposition to Starmer's Labour government
I just can’t envisage any scenario where Reform would get 30-35%. Do you have any evidence for your assertion?
He loves Reform.
That is it.
They are a pathetic joke of a party, only HYUFD takes them seriously.
HYUFD can't imaging people continuing to follow a Conservative government if they changed stance on the EU, despite him having done exactly that.
76% of current Conservative voters voted Leave, they would not stick with a party that pushed Rejoin.
QED by your logic of everyone in a class of voter being the same, voting Reform is the preserve of Remain Tories.
Ha ha ha ha ha.
You are the man who DID vote for Farage in the 2019 European elections when he got 30% of the vote while I still voted for May's Tories even when they got just 9% of the vote.
What utter hypocrisy!
I don't know how to break it down so it gets through your thick skull but the 2019 European Parliament elections were not a real election, and was not electing anyone to represent us in Westminster Parliament. How many of the people "elected" in 2019 are still serving their term they were elected to? It was a protest election, at a vote that should never have happened as we should have left already.
That doesn't mean people who voted to protest in 2019 would vote Reform in 2024 now that Brexit is done.
You are just again showing you can't understand the reason people actually voted the way they did. There is no great swell of people just eagerly waiting to vote for Reform, it is not happening.
Clearly your even thicker skull is unable to scroll down and see the original comments which were about whether the Tories should push to rejoin the EU.
A policy I said would see a Farage resurgence and most likely see even you vote for Farage again!
I was at a conference where each canadian speaker read out a "land acknowledgment" before starting their talk. It was all us foreigners could do not to snigger.
I was at a conference where each canadian speaker read out a "land acknowledgment" before starting their talk. It was all us foreigners could do not to snigger.
That's 100% you projecting. I've witnesses similar acknowledgements - it happens in Australia too - and never come across anyone reacting as though it was funny.
Oh no, we talked about it at lunch. Brits and Americans and French. If you think that makes us horrible people, fine, but it happened.
Watching Sunak at the Liaison Committee man he's going to be absolutely destroyed during a general election campaign and that's before lawyer Starmer tears him a new one.,
The big picture is a simple one. Two (I think) uncontroversial observations:
1 Rushi Sunak is horribly overpromoted. He might have been a decent PM ten years down the line, but right now, he isn't up to the job.
2 There is nobody in the Conservative Party who could do better than he is doing.
Therefore, Rishi, the Conservatives and the country face 12-18 months of painful stasis before the government finally falls over the cliff.
Short of a Simply Enormous Event, that's it, isn't it?
I spoke to a Brexiteer the other day, he reckons the Tories are out of power until they embrace Rejoin.
A sort of Nixon goes to China moment*.
Ironically the person he thinks who could pull this off is the person he rather despises , one Boris Johnson.
*I did point out joining the EC/EU has been standard Tory orthodoxy for most of the last 70 years. Brexit was the Nixon goes to China moment.
If the Tories embraced Rejoin they would cease to be the main party of the right in the UK, RefUK under a newly returned Farage would replace them as the main right of centre party and opposition to Labour.
Even Labour wouldn't embrace Rejoin now because of the redwall, at most they would consider EEA if they win and are then re elected.
The only UK wide party whose voter coalition would allow them to consider Rejoin are the LDs you vote for
The Tories are on course for ceasing to be the main party of the right if they embrace the blood and soil nationalism of the New Tories.
No they aren't, they are still about 25-30% with another 5-10% voting Reform.
Embrace Rejoin and they would collapse to 10% or less, probably fall to even fewer seats than the SNP and LDs under FPTP, Reform would get 30-35% and become the main opposition to Starmer's Labour government
I just can’t envisage any scenario where Reform would get 30-35%. Do you have any evidence for your assertion?
He loves Reform.
That is it.
They are a pathetic joke of a party, only HYUFD takes them seriously.
HYUFD can't imaging people continuing to follow a Conservative government if they changed stance on the EU, despite him having done exactly that.
76% of current Conservative voters voted Leave, they would not stick with a party that pushed Rejoin.
QED by your logic of everyone in a class of voter being the same, voting Reform is the preserve of Remain Tories.
Ha ha ha ha ha.
You are the man who DID vote for Farage in the 2019 European elections when he got 30% of the vote while I still voted for May's Tories even when they got just 9% of the vote.
What utter hypocrisy!
I don't know how to break it down so it gets through your thick skull but the 2019 European Parliament elections were not a real election, and was not electing anyone to represent us in Westminster Parliament. How many of the people "elected" in 2019 are still serving their term they were elected to? It was a protest election, at a vote that should never have happened as we should have left already.
That doesn't mean people who voted to protest in 2019 would vote Reform in 2024 now that Brexit is done.
You are just again showing you can't understand the reason people actually voted the way they did. There is no great swell of people just eagerly waiting to vote for Reform, it is not happening.
Clearly your even thicker skull is unable to scroll down and see the original comments which were about whether the Tories should push to rejoin the EU.
A policy I said would see a Farage resurgence and most likely see even you vote for Farage again!
No, it would not. That's what you don't understand. 🤦♂️
Brexit is done now. If there's ever a rejoin campaign, that can and should be debated on its own merits at that time. The mandate of 23/6/16 was fulfilled on 31/01/20 when the UK left the EU. That's it, its done now, history.
Sorry to moan but can we not discuss something important?
Ukrainian intelligence stating that Russian forces are evacuating from Enerhodar and even Melitopol (really?). Major concern they are going to do something crazy at the NPP. I cannot understand what the west is doing. There was no serious response to the blowing of the Kahkovka dam, even a lack of attribution to Russia! Many of the leading analysts also seem to be avoiding the subject. Am I missing something here?
It's no doubt an amazingly delicate situation as far as world powers are concerned. Not only us muggins don't really know what to do, they don't either.
But given the pretty obvious liklihood the dam was Russia's doing, and the potential to do even worse, I really do hope the powers that be are doing something, even if just to respond fully the next time something inevitably happens where Russia does something particularly despicable!
Watching Sunak at the Liaison Committee man he's going to be absolutely destroyed during a general election campaign and that's before lawyer Starmer tears him a new one.,
The big picture is a simple one. Two (I think) uncontroversial observations:
1 Rushi Sunak is horribly overpromoted. He might have been a decent PM ten years down the line, but right now, he isn't up to the job.
2 There is nobody in the Conservative Party who could do better than he is doing.
Therefore, Rishi, the Conservatives and the country face 12-18 months of painful stasis before the government finally falls over the cliff.
Short of a Simply Enormous Event, that's it, isn't it?
I spoke to a Brexiteer the other day, he reckons the Tories are out of power until they embrace Rejoin.
A sort of Nixon goes to China moment*.
Ironically the person he thinks who could pull this off is the person he rather despises , one Boris Johnson.
*I did point out joining the EC/EU has been standard Tory orthodoxy for most of the last 70 years. Brexit was the Nixon goes to China moment.
If the Tories embraced Rejoin they would cease to be the main party of the right in the UK, RefUK under a newly returned Farage would replace them as the main right of centre party and opposition to Labour.
Even Labour wouldn't embrace Rejoin now because of the redwall, at most they would consider EEA if they win and are then re elected.
The only UK wide party whose voter coalition would allow them to consider Rejoin are the LDs you vote for
The Tories are on course for ceasing to be the main party of the right if they embrace the blood and soil nationalism of the New Tories.
No they aren't, they are still about 25-30% with another 5-10% voting Reform.
Embrace Rejoin and they would collapse to 10% or less, probably fall to even fewer seats than the SNP and LDs under FPTP, Reform would get 30-35% and become the main opposition to Starmer's Labour government
I just can’t envisage any scenario where Reform would get 30-35%. Do you have any evidence for your assertion?
He loves Reform.
That is it.
They are a pathetic joke of a party, only HYUFD takes them seriously.
HYUFD can't imaging people continuing to follow a Conservative government if they changed stance on the EU, despite him having done exactly that.
76% of current Conservative voters voted Leave, they would not stick with a party that pushed Rejoin.
QED by your logic of everyone in a class of voter being the same, voting Reform is the preserve of Remain Tories.
Ha ha ha ha ha.
You are the man who DID vote for Farage in the 2019 European elections when he got 30% of the vote while I still voted for May's Tories even when they got just 9% of the vote.
What utter hypocrisy!
I don't know how to break it down so it gets through your thick skull but the 2019 European Parliament elections were not a real election, and was not electing anyone to represent us in Westminster Parliament. How many of the people "elected" in 2019 are still serving their term they were elected to? It was a protest election, at a vote that should never have happened as we should have left already.
That doesn't mean people who voted to protest in 2019 would vote Reform in 2024 now that Brexit is done.
You are just again showing you can't understand the reason people actually voted the way they did. There is no great swell of people just eagerly waiting to vote for Reform, it is not happening.
Clearly your even thicker skull is unable to scroll down and see the original comments which were about whether the Tories should push to rejoin the EU.
A policy I said would see a Farage resurgence and most likely see even you vote for Farage again!
What if Farage is the Nixon in this scenario and changes his mind on the EU?
I was at a conference where each canadian speaker read out a "land acknowledgment" before starting their talk. It was all us foreigners could do not to snigger.
That's 100% you projecting. I've witnesses similar acknowledgements - it happens in Australia too - and never come across anyone reacting as though it was funny.
That seems quite likely, though carnforth might retort that might not you be the one who was projecting and thus not seen something similar.
I was at a conference where each canadian speaker read out a "land acknowledgment" before starting their talk. It was all us foreigners could do not to snigger.
Canada, like Australia which does similar, has far better and healthier racial relations than America does by engaging with this stuff and learning from it, rather than trying to pretend the past was all fantastic and that only troublemakers want to acknowledge any issues.
Has PB opined on the frankly lunatic idea to close all ticket offices?
This government should be put down, like a rabid dog.
It might be more cost-effective to close all ticket offices but that doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. People like to have a bit of human contact sometimes, even if it isn't strictly necessary.
Terrible Blue Wall polling for the Tories, from the South of England. R&W 2nd July. The lowest Blue Wall voting share for the Conservatives since Sunak became PM.
Con 29% (-21, -2) LD 25% (-2, +3) Lab 36% (+15, -2) Reform 5% (+5, uc) Green 43% (+3, uc)
Changes shown in brackets: change v General Election, followed by change since last Red Wall poll (mid June).
The averages for the LDs and Labour are misleading. The LDs are the clear challengers to the Conservatives in just over half of these seats, Labour being the clear challenger in about two-fifths, with it being unclear in the rest. The Labour and LD votes are already concentrated in the relevant seats and will be even more so now as tactical voting revives. By contrast, the Con vote has to be spread out everywhere to defend every one of these seats.
Given polling like this, the LDs seem to me to be very good value to be the third largest party at the next GE.
34% still back Sunak as preferred PM on that bluewall poll
You think only 34% backing him in the Blue Wall, by any loose definition the sort of southern rural seats that the party absolutely dominates in, is good news?
A deal has been reached for Ursula von der Leyen to become the next Nato Secretary General and the first woman to head the alliance, The National understands.
The year-long extension of incumbent Jens Stoltenberg’s tenure has been arranged so Ms von der Leyen can finish her five-year term as President of the European Commission in 2024, a Nato insider has said.
As predicted by pb's own @Dura_Ace iirc (or at least, he noted the strange coincidence of JS's extension and UvdL becoming available).
I am sure Putin is quaking in his boots at von der Leyen as Nato Secretary General
She’s been a hell of a lot more effective at strategy in this war than Vlad has. The EC, much more than the individual member states, has played it pretty well.
What is it with you right wingers and this idea that wars must be won by muscly hetero Russian types with scowls on their faces rather than those woke westerners and ladies who wear suits? It’s all over American alt-right social media and evidently exists here too.
It was Boris who gave Zelensky the weapons to hold Putin off at the initial invasion, not the EU.
The biggest military aid to the Ukranians since the war began has come from the US, not the EU.
Outer sphere EU nations like Poland have also been tougher on Putin than France and Germany
Oh give me a break. Have you actually considered what powers the European Commission has and what it’s been able to achieve, including a more comprehensive sanctions regime than anyone expected and the near total elimination of Russian hydrocarbons from the EU? And then considered what the role of the NATO Secretary general actually involves (hint, like the EC president it doesn’t include supplying weapons)? Do you seriously think Boris would do a good job in that overwhelmingly diplomatic post?
Probably he would, yes, he did well on the international sphere consistently. But does it matter?
Its absurd the amount people want to take their own national petty politics and big it up on the international stage where is not frigging relevant.
What do David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer have in common? They've all handled the situation in Ukraine well. Besides the abberation of Jeremy Corbyn, who is sui generis, this isn't a Labour or Tory issue - the UK has rallied behind Ukraine consistently now since 2014 at the very least.
And the EU and Germany and France have done well too since the 2022 invasion as well.
Some things are bigger than petty party politics. The UK has done well helping Ukraine. So has the EU. So has America. So have many international allies and partners.
Labour isn't the enemy when it comes to Ukraine, nor are the Conservatives, nor is the EU or anyone else. There's only one villain in this piece. Russia as led by Vladimir Putin, and anyone who supports them or excuses them. That is it.
Agree with most of what you said, but I do think it's a bad idea to appoint anyone who has spent their career insulting and antagonising leaders of important NATO countries. That criterion would exclude a number of people from contention in my mind, of which Boris is but one.
I could explain how Boris's relationship with the leaders of France and Turkey could be problematic, but actually there's another country in this mix that's easy to miss but once you think about it you realise how unsuitable a candidate Boris would be: the United Kingdom.
Boris has been commendable on Ukraine, but this job is about more than just that.
I also agree with most of what he said despite the fact it was a reply to me. The original post that riled me was an incredibly (and actually somewhat uncharacteristically for HYUFD) 4-Chan style comment along the lines of “ooh I bet Putin will be quaking in his boots at UVDL” as if the role of the NATO Secretary general is to beat an oiled-up Putin in a bare chested cage fight rather than to be a very good diplomat able to get consensus on difficult issues like persuading Turkey to admit Sweden into the alliance.
Nothing in that says that Turkey can't be persuaded to accept Sweden's membership.
Quite. Given unanimity is required and Turkey is in no rush whatsoever, they presumably think they can finagle a very large amount of persuasion to head their way.
On the nuclear power station false flag, the question is what is Russia's motive. There are probably only two: a nasty scorched-earth policy, in which case we can expect it to be followed by a withdrawal from part of the territory they are occupying. The second possibility is to give them a pretext to threaten the use of nuclear weapons more directly in 'retaliation'.
There’s no questioning Biden’s mental capacity, when he can clearly see how much better Daisy will be in the NATO job than our baldy - who’s handicapped by being both a soldier and popular politician.
something has quietly crept up on UK politics with a big betting implication, I expect a header on this any second. Will baldy go for Tory leader now? He’s got con home and the membership onboard. He should be betting favourite shouldn’t he?
Let’s be blunt here. Straight after that election defeat, the Tories can do so much worse than rally around Wallace.
Under another leader they could go down to ideological places, distancing the party and brand from so much of the electorate left struggling to find the Tories in their niche private coves, the Tories could spend all the next parliamentary term looking factionally divided, and go into the late twenties election with an economic policy which falls apart within days of the campaign starting.
Under Wallace they could form a cabinet from across the wings and factions of the party, unite around traditional conservative policies, and concentrate on a solid economic offering going into the election.
At this moment Wallace has to be a price for leader to quickly get on before it tightens?
Terrible Blue Wall polling for the Tories, from the South of England. R&W 2nd July. The lowest Blue Wall voting share for the Conservatives since Sunak became PM.
Con 29% (-21, -2) LD 25% (-2, +3) Lab 36% (+15, -2) Reform 5% (+5, uc) Green 43% (+3, uc)
Changes shown in brackets: change v General Election, followed by change since last Red Wall poll (mid June).
The averages for the LDs and Labour are misleading. The LDs are the clear challengers to the Conservatives in just over half of these seats, Labour being the clear challenger in about two-fifths, with it being unclear in the rest. The Labour and LD votes are already concentrated in the relevant seats and will be even more so now as tactical voting revives. By contrast, the Con vote has to be spread out everywhere to defend every one of these seats.
Given polling like this, the LDs seem to me to be very good value to be the third largest party at the next GE.
34% still back Sunak as preferred PM on that bluewall poll
You think only 34% backing him in the Blue Wall, by any loose definition the sort of southern rural seats that the party absolutely dominates in, is good news?
The key take out for me is Labour down and Lib Dem’s up - that by my psephological reading is scary for the Tories as it suggests tactical voting firming up to get the Tory out.
These blue wall polls are quite weird. Was Blair ever this popular and Labour ever this popular in blue wall when in power? If not then our only conclusion is Brexit has changed the electoral map of the country? Certainly it suggests more than enough voters there not scared of Starmer or Labour, the only question now, as so many of these seats are Lib Dem not Labour targets, so much of the local government gone Lib Dem since Boris got Brexit done, can the LLG work in such a way to cause more of a Tory bloodbath than even poor polling suggests?
Yes Lib Dem’s making hay here helps them become third party with all its privileges once again. But it also means a very low return of Tory MPs to Westminster. And even worse than that, if Lib Dem’s hit 50+ MPs again, that’s incumbency bonus, it’s a fire wall preventing a quick Tory return to power.
Saw Sunak’s committee appearance today. Good grief, it was bad. The Tories need to find another leader.
I noticed Mike floated the idea in a header of Penny Mourdant becoming leader before the next election as it would result in a better election result than if Sunak led them into it. If, as well as becoming PM, Penny replaced Braverman for a moderate trustworthy Home Secretary then the Tories would definitely get a better election result than they are currently going to get.
Penny is miles yards and inches more human and in touch than Sunak. Sunak is going to be a vote losing disaster in an election campaign.
The Tories should do it. They should replace Sunak with Penny.
The thing about railways is that while they* use Miles and Chains as a positional reference system to identify the nominal location of where you are on the rail network - but actual location is measured on a grid coordinate system measured in m/mm and every physical measurement at that point is taken in meters/mm.
* East Coast Main Line plus HS1 & HS2 use Km and m as their reference system - it is only the older lines that still use miles/chains.
There is a similar system used in road building where the centreline of the road is called its 'chainage' except it is is measured in km and m. Take a close look at any major road construction site and you will see survey posts with markings saying things like 23+450 meaning you are at km 23 plus 450m.
Chains used to be an accurate measurement device in the days before modern survey instruments - nobody has used them for maybe 100 years (?) - but even today a surveyors assistant is called a chain boy.
Nothing that requires precision in the real world is ever measured in imperial.
The government missed a trick in the 1970s by not adopting nominal metric measures - eg a Pinte would be 500ml, a Pounde would be 500g. People could then continue to use common measures in everyday shopping while actually using the metric system.
The French do this to a certain extent using colloquial terms such as une livre (pound) of butter (actually 500g) or un demi (half) of beer (500ml).
Even the American dominated oil & gas industry does this - pipe sizes are often referred to by its nominal inch size and pound rating - but this is just shorthand. Everything is physically measured in mm , bar etc.
Doesn't this imperial measure thingie come around every few months? Then we discuss it for a day and nowt happens. Then it comes around again. It's a less frequent version of our weekly Russian troll.
We should resuscitate the discussion on Saturday and see what this week’s troll has to contribute.
I am very late to this party (thanks to finding it impossible to get a browser to log on correctly from my iPhone or iPad) but in the spirit of giving you a good laugh or something similar, here in Malaysia, where I live but not currently reside, we use metric units for everything BUT floor measurements. My wife is a real estate agent and area is quoted in sq ft. and that causes me no end of amusement when I see sq ft converted to (sq m) which are then quoted to three decimal places in their legal agreements. Whilst on this theme I did a Further Maths A Level in the early 70s which was taught by the recently retired Deputy Headmaster of the school I attended. Our text books were in Imperial units so he taught us that (ie foot poundal, ft per sec and so on). Two weeks before the A Level he announced that the exam would be in metric units and proceeded to give us a crash course in the equivalent metric units. I got a grade E, which counted as a bare pass in those days. Roll on to my first year at University studying Electrical Engineering and lo and behold the maths we are being taught is what I had leant in the Further Maths A Level. I was dreading this but with a different teacher and a year studying in metric units the outcome was different. Come the exam we were told that to avoid wholescale failure ALL the questions we answered would be marked. So don't just answer 5 out of 8 but do them all and aim for 160%! Well I knew how to answer 6 of them correctly and that became the only time I have ever scored more than 100% in an exam. (Yes, there were quite a few who failed maths that year and who transferred to 'other subjects' rather than drop out).
Heh. 0.001 square metres is about the size of a pencil. Definitely a case of overprecision.
Watching Sunak at the Liaison Committee man he's going to be absolutely destroyed during a general election campaign and that's before lawyer Starmer tears him a new one.,
The big picture is a simple one. Two (I think) uncontroversial observations:
1 Rushi Sunak is horribly overpromoted. He might have been a decent PM ten years down the line, but right now, he isn't up to the job.
2 There is nobody in the Conservative Party who could do better than he is doing.
Therefore, Rishi, the Conservatives and the country face 12-18 months of painful stasis before the government finally falls over the cliff.
Short of a Simply Enormous Event, that's it, isn't it?
I spoke to a Brexiteer the other day, he reckons the Tories are out of power until they embrace Rejoin.
A sort of Nixon goes to China moment*.
Ironically the person he thinks who could pull this off is the person he rather despises , one Boris Johnson.
*I did point out joining the EC/EU has been standard Tory orthodoxy for most of the last 70 years. Brexit was the Nixon goes to China moment.
I am firmly of the opinion that, at some point during the next Labour decade, a Tory leadership contender will run on a Rejoin platform. And do surprisingly well. He/she probably isn't in government yet, and maybe not in Parliament.
To get a decade in power Labour will have to find a solution to the doctors 35% pay demand.
Don't pay it and get continuous NHS strikes, pay it and get equivalent pay demands from the rest of the public sector.
Perhaps they could pay everyone by taxing property but that will create other sets of people angry at losing out.
Juggling the different groups isn't going to be easy especially as those who gain forget quicker than those who lose out.
Paying something in between instead of paying the same people agency fees of £2k+ per shift to cover themselves striking will save money, improve retention and productivity.
What's something in between ?
20% ? 25% ? 30% ?
That demand for 35% is likely to increase with a Labour government.
Whatever the doctors are given will become the minimum demand for the rest of the public sector.
And why not - if the high paid get a big pay rise the low paid deserve the same.
Less than those numbers, at least per year. And anything over inflation should be for junior doctors (£40-60k) rather than the higher paid more experienced doctors who might be earning £100k+.
It would be better if we moved to make doctor pay significantly flatter over their careers rather than quite so back loaded, especially with long degrees and higher student debt, tax and house prices.
But regardless, paying regularly someone £2k to cover a single shift of a striking worker (possibly themself!) because we are not willing to give a £5k annual pay rise makes absolutely zero mathematical sense. I don't quite get why people think it saves us any taxpayer money.
Why would the doctors accept less than even 20% ?
It would be an admittance that their initial demands were based upon greed and lies and that all the damage they've done by striking was unnecessary.
As to the current costs well doesn't that apply to every dispute ? But the cost of giving way is in the further demands it prompts. In this case whatever the doctors get will be the immediate demand for the rest of the public sector.
I don't think it applies to every dispute at all. Sometimes employers have more power. But not when we need to recruit a load more people, the existing ones are leaving and we have a backlog of 7m operations.
We have just gone through a decade where a lot of public sector was heavily squeezed, initially correctly so, but it has increasingly become a doctrine done out of political belief rather than common sense and pragmatism. It is now hugely counter productive and a big part of why the government is failing.
But it always comes back to my initial point.
That if the doctors got their big pay rise then the rest of the public sector will want the same.
We can discuss the details of individual cases on the internet but in the real world it will be "they got X% so we want X%".
So its going to be strikes or more taxation.
Why shouldn't they get the same?
Why is it good enough to give double-digit pay rises to those on welfare but only 3-4% for those who work for a living like teachers?
How is it any more outrageous to be asking for more than inflation, when you're getting offered less than inflation?
The Government started this mess by dicking around and picking priority groups to pander to, which predominantly was those who aren't working because that's their client vote. When others are being treated better than you are, why shouldn't those who are working demand their slice too?
Responsible governance would have been to say "we're all in it together" and mean it, scrap the triple lock etc and have flat rates across the board - but instead some groups were pandered to and others told suck up nearly double-digit real terms pay cuts.
I agree - they should get the same.
Which is the problem PM Starmer will have:
Giving the doctors what they want means having to give everyone else the same which means more taxation on someone else plus private sector workers now being aggrieved.
Alternatively don't give the doctors what they want and have continuous strikes from them.
But. As the nurses have shown, folk get fed up of striking pretty soon. There won't be any prospect of doctors still striking this time next year.
And even if the doctors give up this year they haven't gone away and their pay demands will only grow.
They are not giving up, particularly with the refusal of the government to meet and negotiate. In my union (HCSA) today the Juniors voted 96% for a further 6 months of strikes.
Your hound looks like he is having a grand old time.
Hopefully, although as a road trip heading for Finland he also gets to spend a lot of time in the car.
What's your itinerary Ian? I have often fancied driving up the coast of Norway.
Ferries to Holland and Norway - gets the car to Norway with only three hours driving on the continent, then zigzagging up through the fjords, taking in Stavanger, Bergen, Alesund and Trondheim, a few days on an island out to sea, then just reaching the arctic circle before cutting down through Sweden and the ferry to Finland, doing about ten days in Finland finishing in Helsinki, long ferry back to Travemunde then driving back for the ferry from Holland, hopefully taking in the world's largest model railway en route.
If Orkney becomes part of Norway, you should be able to get a ferry directly from Kirkwall to Bergen.
I do wonder what the Orcadians would think of Norwegian alcohol taxation.
Yes, and they still have those funny monopoly shops as the only places you can buy wine and spirits, where you choose from a catalogue and pass your order through a little hatch with a grille and they bring it out to you in a brown paper bag. Buying a porn mag when we were young was easier.
That was the situation in BC in the 80's. Well. The state monopoly shops anyways. There were only 4 in Greater Victoria. For about a quarter of a million people. They weren't big either. Selection no better than your average supermarket here.
It’s like that out here, although they do let you walk around the shop - and they started doing delivery during the pandemic!
I was at a conference where each canadian speaker read out a "land acknowledgment" before starting their talk. It was all us foreigners could do not to snigger.
The question of what of weight to place on historical injustices is fraught, contentious. But acknowledgment of wrongs which still affect present day communities is surely the absolute minimum obligation of society ?
Saw Sunak’s committee appearance today. Good grief, it was bad. The Tories need to find another leader.
I noticed Mike floated the idea in a header of Penny Mourdant becoming leader before the next election as it would result in a better election result than if Sunak led them into it. If, as well as becoming PM, Penny replaced Braverman for a moderate trustworthy Home Secretary then the Tories would definitely get a better election result than they are currently going to get.
Penny is miles yards and inches more human and in touch than Sunak. Sunak is going to be a vote losing disaster in an election campaign.
The Tories should do it. They should replace Sunak with Penny.
The risk is that a sixth Conservative Prime Minister in such a short period finally implodes the credibility of the party even with its core vote.
Furthermore, even if one believed Penny Mordaunt to be the best possible leader for the Tories, which is a far from settled question, the calculations about the coming defeat are already being made- hence the exodus of MPs, and also certain MPs who now expect to lose at the next GE making plans to establish/resume lucrative non-Parliamentary careers during what they hope will be the interregnum.
Sunak can not turn it around, and neither can anyone else. The reality is that any new leader would serve briefly as PM and then have to resign the leadership after the inevitable GE defeat. Indeed the backlash at yet another leadership change could risk sending the party into a death spiral an might lead to irresistible demands for an immediate GE.
So the risk calculations are better for any new leader and for the Tory party itself if they take the leadership from the departing Sunak after the GE and start with a clean slate. All this assumes that Sunak would go quietly, but "imperial purple makes the best burial sheet", so he may decide to resist the pressure, and any civil war would be equally fatal for the sickly child of Tory re-election hopes.
There’s no questioning Biden’s mental capacity, when he can clearly see how much better Daisy will be in the NATO job than our baldy - who’s handicapped by being both a soldier and popular politician.
something has quietly crept up on UK politics with a big betting implication, I expect a header on this any second. Will baldy go for Tory leader now? He’s got con home and the membership onboard. He should be betting favourite shouldn’t he?
Let’s be blunt here. Straight after that election defeat, the Tories can do so much worse than rally around Wallace.
Under another leader they could go down to ideological places, distancing the party and brand from so much of the electorate left struggling to find the Tories in their niche private coves, the Tories could spend all the next parliamentary term looking factionally divided, and go into the late twenties election with an economic policy which falls apart within days of the campaign starting.
Under Wallace they could form a cabinet from across the wings and factions of the party, unite around traditional conservative policies, and concentrate on a solid economic offering going into the election.
At this moment Wallace has to be a price for leader to quickly get on before it tightens?
I do feel bad for him not getting the NATO job though. Officers of the Netherlands armed forces won’t be constantly acknowledging his presence so he won’t get those “Dutch Salutes” you keep banging on about.
SNP 37% (-1) LAB 34% (+2) CON 17% (-1) LD 9% (nc) OTH 4% (nc)
F/w 23rd - 28th June. Changes vs. 27th April - 3 May.
24 SNP seats would go Labour on that swing since 2019, giving Labour most seats in Scotland again, albeit only by 1 MP.
However it could be more if Conservatives and LDs tactically vote Labour to beat the SNP. Zero swing between SNP and Tories so the Tories would hold all their Scottish seats
Surely Labour would get many more than that, as Conservatives vote tactically to keep the SNP out?
Starmer needs LD tactical votes in England to beat the Tories and Tory tactical votes in Scotland to help beat the SNP
Sunak on the other hand need a feckin' miracle of biblical proportions.
We all Noah that.
He certainly needs faith in the Job.
I think everyone is now expecting many Lamentations from Conservative candidates on election night.
After which, with any luck, they will wander about in the wilderness for 40 years.
Labour will only have wandered for another 9 years after their leader displayed a giant stone tablet with commands on it.
As I recall, the Edstone had 5 pledges. Presumably he has another 5 on the next one.
Hopefully one pledge will be the free owls. I was very disappointed when that was dropped.
If anyone can name any of the pledges they win PB for the day. It turns out there were six.
According to wikipedia sometime PB reader John Rentoul called it the "most absurd, ugly, embarrassing, childish, silly, patronising, idiotic, insane, ridiculous gimmick I have ever seen". He left out hilarious.
Boris's rallying cry to his Telegraph readers - 'Let's turn it into the heaviest suicide note in history' - was one of his better efforts I thought.
Johnson's bon mots were things that made you laugh on first hearing but were mostly forgotten the next morning. No comparison with his hero whose words you heard once and remembered for a lifetime
Saw Sunak’s committee appearance today. Good grief, it was bad. The Tories need to find another leader.
I noticed Mike floated the idea in a header of Penny Mourdant becoming leader before the next election as it would result in a better election result than if Sunak led them into it. If, as well as becoming PM, Penny replaced Braverman for a moderate trustworthy Home Secretary then the Tories would definitely get a better election result than they are currently going to get.
Penny is miles yards and inches more human and in touch than Sunak. Sunak is going to be a vote losing disaster in an election campaign.
The Tories should do it. They should replace Sunak with Penny.
The risk is that a sixth Conservative Prime Minister in such a short period finally implodes the credibility of the party even with its core vote.
Furthermore, even if one believed Penny Mordaunt to be the best possible leader for the Tories, which is a far from settled question, the calculations about the coming defeat are already being made- hence the exodus of MPs, and also certain MPs who now expect to lose at the next GE making plans to establish/resume lucrative non-Parliamentary careers during what they hope will be the interregnum.
Sunak can not turn it around, and neither can anyone else. The reality is that any new leader would serve briefly as PM and then have to resign the leadership after the inevitable GE defeat. Indeed the backlash at yet another leadership change could risk sending the party into a death spiral an might lead to irresistible demands for an immediate GE.
So the risk calculations are better for any new leader and for the Tory party itself if they take the leadership from the departing Sunak after the GE and start with a clean slate. All this assumes that Sunak would go quietly, but "imperial purple makes the best burial sheet", so he may decide to resist the pressure, and any civil war would be equally fatal for the sickly child of Tory re-election hopes.
Yes, save Penny for the rebuilding, once Sunak has lost and HY's nutty colleagues have exhausted whatever utterly unelectable successors they have to work through before sanity returns.
Watching Sunak at the Liaison Committee man he's going to be absolutely destroyed during a general election campaign and that's before lawyer Starmer tears him a new one.,
The big picture is a simple one. Two (I think) uncontroversial observations:
1 Rushi Sunak is horribly overpromoted. He might have been a decent PM ten years down the line, but right now, he isn't up to the job.
2 There is nobody in the Conservative Party who could do better than he is doing.
Therefore, Rishi, the Conservatives and the country face 12-18 months of painful stasis before the government finally falls over the cliff.
Short of a Simply Enormous Event, that's it, isn't it?
I spoke to a Brexiteer the other day, he reckons the Tories are out of power until they embrace Rejoin.
A sort of Nixon goes to China moment*.
Ironically the person he thinks who could pull this off is the person he rather despises , one Boris Johnson.
*I did point out joining the EC/EU has been standard Tory orthodoxy for most of the last 70 years. Brexit was the Nixon goes to China moment.
I am firmly of the opinion that, at some point during the next Labour decade, a Tory leadership contender will run on a Rejoin platform. And do surprisingly well. He/she probably isn't in government yet, and maybe not in Parliament.
To get a decade in power Labour will have to find a solution to the doctors 35% pay demand.
Don't pay it and get continuous NHS strikes, pay it and get equivalent pay demands from the rest of the public sector.
Perhaps they could pay everyone by taxing property but that will create other sets of people angry at losing out.
Juggling the different groups isn't going to be easy especially as those who gain forget quicker than those who lose out.
Paying something in between instead of paying the same people agency fees of £2k+ per shift to cover themselves striking will save money, improve retention and productivity.
What's something in between ?
20% ? 25% ? 30% ?
That demand for 35% is likely to increase with a Labour government.
Whatever the doctors are given will become the minimum demand for the rest of the public sector.
And why not - if the high paid get a big pay rise the low paid deserve the same.
Less than those numbers, at least per year. And anything over inflation should be for junior doctors (£40-60k) rather than the higher paid more experienced doctors who might be earning £100k+.
It would be better if we moved to make doctor pay significantly flatter over their careers rather than quite so back loaded, especially with long degrees and higher student debt, tax and house prices.
But regardless, paying regularly someone £2k to cover a single shift of a striking worker (possibly themself!) because we are not willing to give a £5k annual pay rise makes absolutely zero mathematical sense. I don't quite get why people think it saves us any taxpayer money.
Why would the doctors accept less than even 20% ?
It would be an admittance that their initial demands were based upon greed and lies and that all the damage they've done by striking was unnecessary.
As to the current costs well doesn't that apply to every dispute ? But the cost of giving way is in the further demands it prompts. In this case whatever the doctors get will be the immediate demand for the rest of the public sector.
I don't think it applies to every dispute at all. Sometimes employers have more power. But not when we need to recruit a load more people, the existing ones are leaving and we have a backlog of 7m operations.
We have just gone through a decade where a lot of public sector was heavily squeezed, initially correctly so, but it has increasingly become a doctrine done out of political belief rather than common sense and pragmatism. It is now hugely counter productive and a big part of why the government is failing.
But it always comes back to my initial point.
That if the doctors got their big pay rise then the rest of the public sector will want the same.
We can discuss the details of individual cases on the internet but in the real world it will be "they got X% so we want X%".
So its going to be strikes or more taxation.
Why shouldn't they get the same?
Why is it good enough to give double-digit pay rises to those on welfare but only 3-4% for those who work for a living like teachers?
How is it any more outrageous to be asking for more than inflation, when you're getting offered less than inflation?
The Government started this mess by dicking around and picking priority groups to pander to, which predominantly was those who aren't working because that's their client vote. When others are being treated better than you are, why shouldn't those who are working demand their slice too?
Responsible governance would have been to say "we're all in it together" and mean it, scrap the triple lock etc and have flat rates across the board - but instead some groups were pandered to and others told suck up nearly double-digit real terms pay cuts.
I agree - they should get the same.
Which is the problem PM Starmer will have:
Giving the doctors what they want means having to give everyone else the same which means more taxation on someone else plus private sector workers now being aggrieved.
Alternatively don't give the doctors what they want and have continuous strikes from them.
But. As the nurses have shown, folk get fed up of striking pretty soon. There won't be any prospect of doctors still striking this time next year.
And even if the doctors give up this year they haven't gone away and their pay demands will only grow.
They are not giving up, particularly with the refusal of the government to meet and negotiate. In my union (HCSA) today the Juniors voted 96% for a further 6 months of strikes.
A bit of twitter ramping on Zaporzhizia overnight.
The wind direction was due to switch from Easterly to North Westerly yesterday, and remains broadly Northerly, i.e. away from Russia, for several days.
Some of this may be the bots provoking normals to echo their points, but it's a concern, for sure, that the timing is now.
Should we take this Twitter trend seriously today?
There’s no questioning Biden’s mental capacity, when he can clearly see how much better Daisy will be in the NATO job than our baldy - who’s handicapped by being both a soldier and popular politician.
something has quietly crept up on UK politics with a big betting implication, I expect a header on this any second. Will baldy go for Tory leader now? He’s got con home and the membership onboard. He should be betting favourite shouldn’t he?
Let’s be blunt here. Straight after that election defeat, the Tories can do so much worse than rally around Wallace.
Under another leader they could go down to ideological places, distancing the party and brand from so much of the electorate left struggling to find the Tories in their niche private coves, the Tories could spend all the next parliamentary term looking factionally divided, and go into the late twenties election with an economic policy which falls apart within days of the campaign starting.
Under Wallace they could form a cabinet from across the wings and factions of the party, unite around traditional conservative policies, and concentrate on a solid economic offering going into the election.
At this moment Wallace has to be a price for leader to quickly get on before it tightens?
Wallace may be popular on Conhome, but I do wonder why. He is a charisma free nonentity without any real hinterland in the party. Probably a better choice than the vile Braverman, but little else to suggest that he can revive the zombie party.
Terrible Blue Wall polling for the Tories, from the South of England. R&W 2nd July. The lowest Blue Wall voting share for the Conservatives since Sunak became PM.
Con 29% (-21, -2) LD 25% (-2, +3) Lab 36% (+15, -2) Reform 5% (+5, uc) Green 43% (+3, uc)
Changes shown in brackets: change v General Election, followed by change since last Red Wall poll (mid June).
The averages for the LDs and Labour are misleading. The LDs are the clear challengers to the Conservatives in just over half of these seats, Labour being the clear challenger in about two-fifths, with it being unclear in the rest. The Labour and LD votes are already concentrated in the relevant seats and will be even more so now as tactical voting revives. By contrast, the Con vote has to be spread out everywhere to defend every one of these seats.
Given polling like this, the LDs seem to me to be very good value to be the third largest party at the next GE.
34% still back Sunak as preferred PM on that bluewall poll
You think only 34% backing him in the Blue Wall, by any loose definition the sort of southern rural seats that the party absolutely dominates in, is good news?
The Blue Wall in this case is actually Remain or soft Leave Tory seats, not rural seats with bigger Leave votes
Comments
Yes, if we were in the late 1990s with low inflation, low tax and a growing economy for an incoming Labour government there might be little scope for a rightwing Tory opposition.
However we are facing the highest inflation since the 1970s, a decade which saw 3 changes of government, as well as frequent strikes. Governments all over the world are unpopular, it is the height of arrogance and complacency for Labour supporters here to think they will be in power for decades. Indeed they might be trailing in the polls within a year of election unless they get a grip on the economy!
IE Your mortgage has gone up by £1000 per month but the tories want to have a referendum on abolishing human rights, its just altogether the wrong time, the wrong priorities completely.
Because if so I would advise you to get your moral compass recalibrated.
The greater the difference between what they want and what they are offered then the more incentive to strike.
And even if the doctors give up this year they haven't gone away and their pay demands will only grow.
Whilst on this theme I did a Further Maths A Level in the early 70s which was taught by the recently retired Deputy Headmaster of the school I attended. Our text books were in Imperial units so he taught us that (ie foot poundal, ft per sec and so on). Two weeks before the A Level he announced that the exam would be in metric units and proceeded to give us a crash course in the equivalent metric units. I got a grade E, which counted as a bare pass in those days.
Roll on to my first year at University studying Electrical Engineering and lo and behold the maths we are being taught is what I had leant in the Further Maths A Level. I was dreading this but with a different teacher and a year studying in metric units the outcome was different. Come the exam we were told that to avoid wholescale failure ALL the questions we answered would be marked. So don't just answer 5 out of 8 but do them all and aim for 160%! Well I knew how to answer 6 of them correctly and that became the only time I have ever scored more than 100% in an exam. (Yes, there were quite a few who failed maths that year and who transferred to 'other subjects' rather than drop out).
I do not absolve myself of this. I could definitely panic about this nuclear power station in Ukraine (Zelensky has just put a video up on twitter about explosives).
caused knock on delays across the NW on Sunday.
The three Cumbrian RL sides had two delayed kick offs and a complete postponement from an incident which happened at 7 am.
Just ask Ed Miliband.
It turns out the last election was a good one to lose and the next will be a good one to win I reckon.
A reformulation of existing cathode materials should yield around a 10% increase in performance (and predicted 30% increase in battery longevity).
LG Chem starts production of ‘single crystal’ battery cathode
https://www.thelec.net/news/articleView.html?idxno=4576
If there had been a general election in 2017 polls showed Mrs May would have won it comfortably.
Had the fuel crisis not been resolved by the 2001 election it would have been much closer
To put that 34% in better context, it's the lowest rating for Sunak since R&W began their Blue Wall polling.
And meanwhile, Sunak's approval rating in the same poll is -8, and Starmer's +5.
This government should be put down, like a rabid dog.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jul/04/labour-criticises-rushed-plans-shut-hundreds-rail-ticket-offices-england
In my union (HCSA) today the Juniors voted 96% for a further 6 months of strikes.
https://www.hcsa.com/7551.aspx
But the magic money tree will have gone - the next government is going to need skill and luck, likely a lot of skill and a lot of luck.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12263117/Nearly-rail-station-ticket-office-England-set-close-three-years.html
1) Strikes for year after year
2) PM Starmer gives the demanded pay rise - causing equivalent demands throughout the public sector
3) The doctors accept a minimal pay rise from PM Starmer
There seems to be a lot of wishful thinking on PB that it will be the third but it seems the most unlikely to me.
It's quite bizarre.
They've got themselves a few women leaders, first S.Asian Pm etc etc etc, and then... "Why not shoot cow poo at the Cornish whilst we burn the aspirational youth?!?!?"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_y_Big
I've said before the country needs leaders who have worn ppe not studied PPE.
The UK on the other hand inherits a culture founded on the compromise of the Elizabethan Settlement. And because the British Empire's racism was primarily something practice in the colonies and not at home, cultural racism never really embedded here as a major, long-lasting trend.
Ukrainian intelligence stating that Russian forces are evacuating from Enerhodar and even Melitopol (really?). Major concern they are going to do something crazy at the NPP. I cannot understand what the west is doing. There was no serious response to the blowing of the Kahkovka dam, even a lack of attribution to Russia! Many of the leading analysts also seem to be avoiding the subject. Am I missing something here?
I voted Leave. You did not.
You would vote Reform. I would not.
QED by your logic of everyone in a class of voter being the same, voting Reform is the preserve of Remain Tories.
Who were and are lovable critters, compared with the junkyard curs currently "making their" mark in HMG.
The internet is erasing the line of traditional British politics and bleeding some American cultural problems into this country. Ironically often by those claiming and failing to represent "British values".
https://twitter.com/seatsixtyone/status/1676301915871760384
https://twitter.com/benandjerrys/status/1676214289353572352
This 4th of July, it's high time we recognize that the US exists on stolen Indigenous land and commit to returning it.
Its not as if we haven't got enough issues of our own people can discuss.
You are the man who DID vote for Farage in the 2019 European elections when he got 30% of the vote while I still voted for May's Tories even when they got just 9% of the vote.
What utter hypocrisy!
That doesn't mean people who voted to protest in 2019 would vote Reform in 2024 now that Brexit is done.
You are just again showing you can't understand the reason people actually voted the way they did. There is no great swell of people just eagerly waiting to vote for Reform, it is not happening.
A policy I said would see a Farage resurgence and most likely see even you vote for Farage again!
https://native-land.ca/resources/territory-acknowledgement/
I was at a conference where each canadian speaker read out a "land acknowledgment" before starting their talk. It was all us foreigners could do not to snigger.
The Trail of Tears is a shameful stain on the nation’s history.
Brexit is done now. If there's ever a rejoin campaign, that can and should be debated on its own merits at that time. The mandate of 23/6/16 was fulfilled on 31/01/20 when the UK left the EU. That's it, its done now, history.
https://www.betfair.com/exchange/plus/tennis/market/1.200957123
But given the pretty obvious liklihood the dam was Russia's doing, and the potential to do even worse, I really do hope the powers that be are doing something, even if just to respond fully the next time something inevitably happens where Russia does something particularly despicable!
There’s no questioning Biden’s mental capacity, when he can clearly see how much better Daisy will be in the NATO job than our baldy - who’s handicapped by being both a soldier and popular politician.
something has quietly crept up on UK politics with a big betting implication, I expect a header on this any second. Will baldy go for Tory leader now? He’s got con home and the membership onboard. He should be betting favourite shouldn’t he?
Let’s be blunt here. Straight after that election defeat, the Tories can do so much worse than rally around Wallace.
Under another leader they could go down to ideological places, distancing the party and brand from so much of the electorate left struggling to find the Tories in their niche private coves, the Tories could spend all the next parliamentary term looking factionally divided, and go into the late twenties election with an economic policy which falls apart within days of the campaign starting.
Under Wallace they could form a cabinet from across the wings and factions of the party, unite around traditional conservative policies, and concentrate on a solid economic offering going into the election.
At this moment Wallace has to be a price for leader to quickly get on before it tightens?
These blue wall polls are quite weird. Was Blair ever this popular and Labour ever this popular in blue wall when in power? If not then our only conclusion is Brexit has changed the electoral map of the country? Certainly it suggests more than enough voters there not scared of Starmer or Labour, the only question now, as so many of these seats are Lib Dem not Labour targets, so much of the local government gone Lib Dem since Boris got Brexit done, can the LLG work in such a way to cause more of a Tory bloodbath than even poor polling suggests?
Yes Lib Dem’s making hay here helps them become third party with all its privileges once again. But it also means a very low return of Tory MPs to Westminster. And even worse than that, if Lib Dem’s hit 50+ MPs again, that’s incumbency bonus, it’s a fire wall preventing a quick Tory return to power.
Penny is miles yards and inches more human and in touch than Sunak. Sunak is going to be a vote losing disaster in an election campaign.
The Tories should do it. They should replace Sunak with Penny.
* East Coast Main Line plus HS1 & HS2 use Km and m as their reference system - it is only the older lines that still use miles/chains.
There is a similar system used in road building where the centreline of the road is called its 'chainage' except it is is measured in km and m. Take a close look at any major road construction site and you will see survey posts with markings saying things like 23+450 meaning you are at km 23 plus 450m.
Chains used to be an accurate measurement device in the days before modern survey instruments - nobody has used them for maybe 100 years (?) - but even today a surveyors assistant is called a chain boy.
Nothing that requires precision in the real world is ever measured in imperial.
The French do this to a certain extent using colloquial terms such as une livre (pound) of butter (actually 500g) or un demi (half) of beer (500ml).
Metric rant over
You need to sharpen up
You're aware this practice only finally stopped in the last quarter century ?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_school_system
Mass Grave of Indigenous Children Reported in Canada
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/28/world/canada/kamloops-mass-grave-residential-schools.html
The question of what of weight to place on historical injustices is fraught, contentious. But acknowledgment of wrongs which still affect present day communities is surely the absolute minimum obligation of society ?
Furthermore, even if one believed Penny Mordaunt to be the best possible leader for the Tories, which is a far from settled question, the calculations about the coming defeat are already being made- hence the exodus of MPs, and also certain MPs who now expect to lose at the next GE making plans to establish/resume lucrative non-Parliamentary careers during what they hope will be the interregnum.
Sunak can not turn it around, and neither can anyone else. The reality is that any new leader would serve briefly as PM and then have to resign the leadership after the inevitable GE defeat. Indeed the backlash at yet another leadership change could risk sending the party into a death spiral an might lead to irresistible demands for an immediate GE.
So the risk calculations are better for any new leader and for the Tory party itself if they take the leadership from the departing Sunak after the GE and start with a clean slate. All this assumes that Sunak would go quietly, but "imperial purple makes the best burial sheet", so he may decide to resist the pressure, and any civil war would be equally fatal for the sickly child of Tory re-election hopes.
The government refuses to meet with the unions while industrial action is scheduled, though the law requires 2 weeks notice of intended strike action.
By ignoring and undermining the independent pay board, the only option left is negotiating with the unions, yet the government refuses to do so.
The strikes will therefore continue monthly.
The wind direction was due to switch from Easterly to North Westerly yesterday, and remains broadly Northerly, i.e. away from Russia, for several days.
Some of this may be the bots provoking normals to echo their points, but it's a concern, for sure, that the timing is now.
Should we take this Twitter trend seriously today?