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What if the Tories don’t hold any of Thursday’s by-elections? – politicalbetting.com
What if the Tories don’t hold any of Thursday’s by-elections? – politicalbetting.com
Thursday is a big day for the PM whose party is facing three very difficult defences in Westminster by-elections.
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If one or more are saved, it will look like a good day for Sunak.
The problem for Con MPs is that while there may be a better leader to keep the red wall seats, the blue wall MPs would probably find that leader less appealing than Sunak (and vice versa). Johnson had to go if you, as a Con MP, had any itegrity. Truss had to go if you, as a Con MP, had any interest in still being one after the next election. Sunak does not have to go because it's not obvious who is going to save your job and even if you pick someone, other MPs may see him/her as losing their jobs for them. You might well end up with someone worse for you.
It must be remembered Friday is the start of the summer recess, the open and the ashes test are being played, people are going on holiday, (if strikes let them) then Sunak is planning a September reshuffle no doubt to replace Wallace
I just do not see anyone in the conservative party better than Sunak, nor an appetite for another leadership election, so I expect Sunak will take on Starmer at the next GE
The dog that didn't bark ?
""Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce"."
For Sunak to be ousted and hang on as caretaker while we do the Conservative Road Show (again) would be history repeating itself a third time as something as far on from farce as farce is from tragedy. On a log scale. He would displace Truss and May as laughing stock. He cannot let this happen. Therefore he will call a GE to head off a challenge becausde he has to. He has no choice.
Ukraine formally notified of end to grain deal
Russia has formally notified Ukraine that it will terminate the Black Sea grain deal, according to Moscow’s ambassador to Belarus.
Boris Gryzlov said a note had been sent from the Russian embassy in Minsk to Ukraine via diplomatic channels, and that the deal would end from July 18.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/europe-heatwave-weather-2023-latest-news-b2376359.html
From the previous thread, Kellner's article makes the point that mentioning Sunak/Hunt slightly improves Tory polling.
The TINA argument is also pretty strong, noting that one of the by-elections on Thursday is the result of the most obvious king across the water making himself unavailable for selection, at least until after the next general election.
Enough Conservative MPs have either bought into the Sunak strategy as the least worst available, or are checking out anyway.
China was completely out of left field for me.
Weather forecasting, of course, is subject to considerable uncertainty.
Echt zugzwang.
https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/@2523227/historic
Actual high 37.
It's either a large miss by ESA or undue prominence to an uncertain early forecast.
God knows who gets the gig if Sunak gets run over by a bus tomorrow.
Inciting violence to politicians is totally unacceptable, even if in your case you think it is clever
The reporting for Cerberus/Charon is "is set to hit"/ "Is expected to break" 48.8 C.[1] I'd bet on it NOT breaking that now given the weekend temps and ESA's prediction.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12297771/Europe-set-hit-hottest-temperature-48C-double-heatwaves-boil-continent.html
Edit: but yes, the reporting is a problem.
It's not Sunak; it's the Tories.
Wiki entry:
Old:
The [[European Space Agency]] predicted that temperatures would exceed {{cvt|48|C}} in [[Sardinia]] over the weekend of 15 July, marking the hottest temperature ever recorded in Europe.
My edit:
The [[European Space Agency]] predicted that temperatures would exceed {{cvt|48|C}} in [[Sardinia]] some time in July, marking the hottest temperature ever recorded in Europe.
Original source: (From the Reuters article)
The European Space Agency (ESA), whose satellites monitor land and sea temperatures, said July could be a torrid month.
"Italy, Spain, France, Germany and Poland are all facing a major heatwave with temperatures expected to climb to 48 Celsius on the islands of Sicily and Sardinia – potentially the hottest temperatures ever recorded in Europe," it said.
2. Even if he was, and was selected, and was elected, he may well then be immediately suspended as per the Privileges Cttee report and subject to recall. Granted, that recall might well not succeed given that he had just been elected but the process could well go ahead anyway.
But on your wider point, "All because you won't get down and engage in the debate in the first place". If a policy panders to the basest idiosyncrasies of the most intolerant voters. "I'll support the strafing of boats because I don't like foreigners" we would normally expect our sovereign elected officers to have the intellect and calm reflection to filter out these base thoughts. But we have Lee Anderson. I'll try to engage with him, but I can't promise a positive outcome.
EDIT: Cons currently drifting, and 11/2 with William Hill which definitely looks like value to me.
* Collectively. Outsourcing restraint to external agencies, particularly foreign agencies, is too easily seen as winning by cheating and enables the populist right (and, in other ways, populist left) to undermine their legitimacy.
I’m really struggling to find a way that Starmer is further left than Sunak. Fiscal reality means he cannot borrow, tax or spend more. He’s said this bluntly
He might - might - be more pro-EU but he seems so terrified of Brexit I doubt he will make any serious moves
His adoption of the “horribly Tory” two child policy means he’s very much in the Sunak zone on welfare. Wes Streeting’s announcement that we most not worship the NHS - it’s not an idol - means we might actually get more “market oriented” reform there than with the Tories
Ergo, Starmer could end up further right than Sunak, in government. Bit like that centrist El Salvador fella who turned into Franco (and is now enormously popular)
El Salvador was not far from collapse into a criminal state - an insanely high murder rate, gangs de facto running neighbourhoods, people legitimately afraid to leave the house and cross the wrong street.
If I were a Salvadorian who'd been living in fear like this, I'd be bloody delighted to see all those tattooed scumbags crammed together in manacles and left to rot in that megajail. Faced with the question about some innocents being caught up in that, there's the excellent and highly logical comeback that far more innocents were caught up the status quo beforehand.
It also has the third lowest crime rate in the EU. And you can sense this. No one is gonna take your phone. It’s that vibe
Explanations welcome. I can think of at least two
https://www.thefirstnews.com/article/poland-third-safest-country-in-eu---eurostat-20426#:~:text=Poland is the third safest,average stood at 11 percent
(The two child limit on benefits is horrible, and ought to not exist. Because bad things happen to families who already have three children, or people have twins by accident, or you know, kids who didn't ask to be born shouldn't suffer. But we are in a world where the government has less than no money.)
Now, he may say he is not going to do that but I cannot see how he avoids it. If he taxes the wealthy more, the usual suspects will bleat but ordinary Joe and Jane won't mind overly much.
It's Starmer's only route to making a difference, given he's not about to rejoin the EU.
Nonetheless instinctively I believe the EU ability to curtail base populism was a positive. But it was sold by the cynical as "foreign interference". Now we have ruthlessly ambitious operatives like Cruella, Honest Bob and 30p Lee to contend with who can sell the notion of "foreigners smell bad so let's shoot them all" without an ultimate safeguard, and claim my, or Opposition MPs, or the ECHR's condemnation simply to be "elite, liberal wokery".
A lot of that is based on the local positions, Labour being 10% behind in Selby and around 17% behind in Uxbridge in May 2022. These look borne out by some of the constituency
polling.
Local elections, where decent data were
available, have served me well as markers for
Lab-Con by-elections this parliament, though
Batley and Wakefield had good participation
and were within a month or two of the respective by-elections. There is a bit more
variation here, especially around elapsed
time and geography.
(btw, totted up Somerton & Frome LE 22 roughly the other day, and around a 10% LD lead there from 22. Done deal).
Predictions:
- Lab win Selby by >1000 votes
- Lab win Uxbridge by smaller margin than Selby (agree neither should be 87%)
- LD >20% margin in S&F
Starmer has basically zero room to maneuver
James Cleverly, the foreign secretary, is being tipped to take over from Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, who is to step down at the next reshuffle.
Tom Tugendhat, the security minister and a former territorial army officer who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, is also believed to be in the running for the role. Rishi Sunak is expected to conduct a shake-up of his top team, probably in September, to refresh his government before next year’s election.
Senior government figures said that Cleverly might be in line for a move, and Anne-Marie Trevelyan in a position to succeed him. The defence job is one of the most important for Sunak to fill, given the war in Ukraine, and Cleverly has experience because of his present job. He is an army reservist....
...Other contenders for Wallace’s job include James Heappey, the armed forces minister; and Sunak’s ally John Glen, who is chief secretary to the Treasury.
An outside bet would be Penny Mordaunt, who is leader of the House but briefly had the job under Theresa May. She is just behind Wallace and Cleverly as the most popular cabinet ministers among Tory members. However, she is regarded with suspicion in Downing Street following her run for the leadership and is unlikely to be given such a high-profile role.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/james-cleverly-poised-to-replace-ben-wallace-as-defence-secretary-twhfhw7w7
Nonetheless, dictators have often achieved genuine significant popularity off the back of securing apparent domestic security and safety (and, relatedly, a stable economy), to the point of the public preferring that to democracy and the rule-of-law if the latter can't assure those basics. Maslow and all that.
Now if I lived in the area I would be supporting him as the Labour candidate is dire and the Labour party completely shafted Jamie to avoid him being their candidate.
If it’s so bloody difficult to go through the documents (and I suspect they’re BS numbers), how did they manage to gather sufficient evidence to bring prosecutions in the first place ?
Contemptible excuses for what looks an awful lot like obstruction.
also she seems pretty useless except at sword bearing.
That’s entirely rational. Also, of course, many other societal benefits accrue from a drastically lowered
crime rate (like higher foreign investment etc)
The significant point (and I have to give credit, for the first time in my life, to Mark Francois for noting it) is that we’ve had nine ministers for Defence Procurement in the last decade.
Small wonder that the entire system is a rolling disaster.
What is it with all these horrid Labour MPs called Jones beating up on Nick?
The strategy (being followed with monomaniacal discipline) is to neutralize all of these attack lines in advance, de-risk the election, leave the Tories with nothing to get their teeth into, force them to run on their record and - sure as eggs - lose. We'll find out how Starmer will govern when he's governing and although there'll be no big scary lurch left it's incredibly unlikely it won't be distinctly left of the Conservative Party, esp this Conservative Party.
So I'm sorry Leon but a Labour government is coming and, no, it won't be like your preferred Tory one. You will notice a change, it won't be to your taste, and you'll have to grin and bear it.
And is it really ‘outsourcing’ ?
All countries have laws and constitutions which are rather more deeply embedded than whatever the plurality at the last election decides is desirable.
While it’s true that such constraints are more deeply embedded if you’ve signed up to international obligations, it’s not such a different matter. And as we’ve seen, it’s always possible to abandon such obligations.
The chair should perhaps threaten publicly to resign ?
Males Are the Taller Sex. Estrogen, Not Fights for Mates, May Be Why.
To explain why men are on average taller than women, scientists theorized about competition for mates. But the effects of estrogen on bone growth may be answer enough.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/males-are-the-taller-sex-estrogen-not-fights-for-mates-may-be-why-20200608/
Córdoba getting 43 this afternoon.
Let's take Brexit. The ultimate democratic mandate by plebiscite. In principle a marvellous idea, but when both sets of protagonists sold themselves on false prospecti and one side in particular had their falsehoods backed by client media it makes a mockery of democracy.
For democracy to work "truth" should be the key prospectus for Left, Right and Centre.
https://microwavemasterchef.com/recipes/microwave-cheese-toast/
So that was ten minutes of your life wasted. As to how he’s going to be further left, you notably don’t spell it out. Because this is already a left wing government
I suppose he could authorise trans surgeries for kids age 8
https://twitter.com/mayorjd/status/1680912916164276224?s=46&t=16Vx1hkPdKeRguANzrOtZQ
In my mind, he is more likely to win than the Labour candidate - easier to convince Cons to vote Ind than Labour and he has a track record of doing the role, although at smaller scale.
Could they be done for Contempt of Parliament?
Hunt was among those running in the first, and I assume Sunak is pretty sanguine about the fact a lot of people chucked their hats in the ring for that one.
It's the second one where Mordaunt rather unwisely gave it another go when Sunak was pushing for a rallying round and a coronation (which he ultimately got but it wasn't as clean as he'd have liked).
That doesn’t make him “more left wing than Sunak”, which is a bizarre claim.
Merely that he wants to win the election, and leave as many options open as possible.
He is not very charismatic, but he has ruthless focus.
We need a lot of James Driscoll's to show SKS and Akehurst stupid actions have consequences.
Already had successful campaigns from others who stood up and won including Murza last week.
DYOR etc etc
https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/default-source/child-growth/growth-reference-5-19-years/height-for-age-(5-19-years)/cht-hfa-girls-perc-5-19years.pdf?sfvrsn=f90a33cf_4
Female @ 13 yrs 170 cm expected height ~ 175; male @ 13 yrs 170 cm expected height 190 cm.
Not, I think, on recent form.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquiries_Act_2005#Criticisms
… Indeed, the Act repealed the entirety of the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act 1921 which had allowed Parliament to vote on a resolution establishing a tribunal that had "all such powers, rights, and privileges as are vested in the High Court" and placed the power solely under the control of a Minister…