In Northern News Jamie Driscoll (North of Tyne Mayor) has resigned from the Labour party and is now fundraising to run as an independent candidate.
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.
In Northern News Jamie Driscoll (North of Tyne Mayor) has resigned from the Labour party and is now fundraising to run as an independent candidate.
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.
Some serious bullshitting from the Post Office on WATO today.
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.
The enquiry chair should refer the obstruction to the police, or whoever is the appropriate authority to start the process of locking up the PO management. Appaling behaviour from them.
The relevant legislation empowering such enquiries means that they are the plaything of government. Without the backing of Badenoch, such action isn’t really possible. The chair should perhaps threaten publicly to resign ?
Ground temperature is what is showing on the front page map. Not standard air temperature.
"This image uses data from the Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission’s radiometer instrument and shows the land surface temperature across Europe and parts of northern Africa in the morning of 10 July 2023. Land surface temperatures hit 46°C in Rome, Italy, while Madrid and Seville reached 46 and 47°C, respectively."
This is why Sunak is so bad, he's acting like a poundshop Humza Yousaf regarding Kate Forbes
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.
Well Tuggers is apparently in the running and also ran against Sunak. The objection to Penny may be Sunak wants to go big on Woke.
also she seems pretty useless except at sword bearing.
I assume the reference is to Mordaunt running in the second contest last year rather than the first.
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).
Thanks. I had forgotten it was not entirely uncontested.
'So: prediction time. I currently expect Labour to end up with 40-44 per cent of the vote, while the Tories win 31-35 per cent. If the result falls within those ranges, Labour will be the largest party, and has a 50-50 chance of securing an overall majority. However, these should be regarded like medium-term economic forecasts, subject to revision—and just as likely to be as wrong as the Bank of England’s recent inflation forecasts. Like economic forecasts, I shall be updating my predictions as the election draw near.'
Whether it's the great Kellner or somebody on here I'm never that bowled over by the above sort of thing. It's not a prediction at all. It's an artful way of discussing the election in a way that sounds authoritative and carries almost no risk of being wrong. You just keep updating your 'prediction' in line with the polls, caveated with the relevant error margins, and end up where almost everyone else is, never having gone anywhere exciting on the route there.
Not the way. Not for punditry and definitely not for betting. The way is to decide which of 2 camps you're in. Is this a sweeping change election where the Tories get their asses handed to them by the voters and the only question is the size of the Labour majority? Or is it a more workmanlike affair where the new boundaries, swingback, traditional distrust of Labour on the economy, lack of enthusiasm for them ('Starmer no Blair'), shy tories, tory campaigning prowess plus their media attack dogs, etc etc, where these factors combine to limit the Labour win to something wafer thin or to largest party in a hung parliament?
You have to jump one way or the other and you have to do this now (and be right obviously!) in order to secure big betting value. I've done this fwiw. I've jumped and where I've landed is slap bang in the 1st camp. Clear Labour win. Outright majority nailed on. More chance of a landslide than of a hung parliament.
Wishful thinking.
Starmer had a mare this weekend. If he can't think on his feet during a campaign he will shed the lead Theresa May style. The Conservatives' LauraK owned him yesterday. Blair was much better with Sophie Ridge.
I don't think so, Pete, because the bias I always have to fight in myself is the other way. The inclination to bet in a manner that will create profit if what I don't want to happen happens. The old 'emotional hedge'. Route to the poorhouse.
And Sunak's no Blair either, is he? In fact the only Blair is Blair.
Do you remember the shock on the morning of Friday 10th April 1992? That sick pit in your stomach when you realised another 5 years of Conservative Governments was in view. I do, so I am bracing myself this time.
And this next Conservative Government of controlled decline will be so much worse without the constraints of the EU to keep it in check. We will come out of it with the most illiberal and populist administration we have ever seen in the UK, and somewhere around mid 2027 the reigns will be taken over by Badenoch, Braverman or Jenrick. Brace, brace!
This is quite a revealing comment. You were quite happy with the EU as it enforced constraints on the UK that would not be democratically voted for by the UK. Surely that is highly illiberal?
I think you will find that across Europe there are much more populist and illiberal elected governments than in the UK.
By being signed up to EU some of the more illiberal populist nonsense that Braverman (in her dreams it would seem) might like to adopt into law would have been unavailable.
Reintroducing capital punishment for taxi- driver nonces or strafing the boats might get a cynical vote or two, but it would have been frowned upon by Brussels. Good old Brussels!
But, with respect, that answer is revealing of the problem so deeply embedded within what likes to see itself as the liberal centre-left that it doesn't even recognise what others can clearly see.
You're not making the case against these policies on their merits but would rather rely on external constraints to prevent their implementation. You assume that they're so self-evidently right that this isn't needed and yet also recognise that a popularly-elected government might want to do so anyway: there's a huge disconnect there. Inevitably, that situation also makes that external constraint unpopular, leading to a wider crisis of legitimacy for it and leaving the field free for the populist right to dominate.
All because you won't get down and engage in the debate in the first place.
With a (now) sixty plus majority, Suella can do what the hell she likes (so long as the courts can be cowed into submission). Take Rwanda. It wasn't in the 2019 manifesto, but she is going for it anyway. And if it falls at the ECHR what will she do? Take a parliamentary vote to leave the ECHR. I don't remember seeing that in the 2019 manifesto.
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.
It's not a question of engaging with Lee Anderson; it's a question of engaging with the public and explaining from first principles why Lee Anderson is wrong. Enough of the hand-wringing: get involved - it's not someone else's* job. You can't just impose policies; you have to win the public over to them.
* 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.
FPT
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)
Fiscal reality does not mean he cannot tax more.
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.
We’ve already become a pretty high tax government under the Tories, so as to pay for our insane debt. Starmer might be able to nudge it a little more but I can’t see him moving dramatically. Wealth taxes are a disaster as Hollande discovered
Starmer has basically zero room to maneuver
Not quite true.
Labour have the option of a much closer, smoother import-export relationship with the EU, which is a strongly pro-growth position.
The swivel-eyed nutters in the Tory Party make this near impossible for Sunak.
So there's a key point of difference there (although you are right about the general fiscal limitations on Sir Keir).
Poland ALSO has excellent high speed trains. The world is trolling us
Unfortunately, having booked my lovely first class berth to krakow, I got on the wrong train and I am now on the slow non aircon branch line and will be standing and perspiring by the bogs for the next five hours. If they don’t throw me off for having the wrong ticket
I've no idea why Labour are such overwhelming favourites with the bookies to win Selby & Ainsty. Over-turning a majority of over 20k is quite a challenge. I hope the bookies are right, but I'm not convinced. Am I missing something?
In Northern News Jamie Driscoll (North of Tyne Mayor) has resigned from the Labour party and is now fundraising to run as an independent candidate.
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.
'So: prediction time. I currently expect Labour to end up with 40-44 per cent of the vote, while the Tories win 31-35 per cent. If the result falls within those ranges, Labour will be the largest party, and has a 50-50 chance of securing an overall majority. However, these should be regarded like medium-term economic forecasts, subject to revision—and just as likely to be as wrong as the Bank of England’s recent inflation forecasts. Like economic forecasts, I shall be updating my predictions as the election draw near.'
Whether it's the great Kellner or somebody on here I'm never that bowled over by the above sort of thing. It's not a prediction at all. It's an artful way of discussing the election in a way that sounds authoritative and carries almost no risk of being wrong. You just keep updating your 'prediction' in line with the polls, caveated with the relevant error margins, and end up where almost everyone else is, never having gone anywhere exciting on the route there.
Not the way. Not for punditry and definitely not for betting. The way is to decide which of 2 camps you're in. Is this a sweeping change election where the Tories get their asses handed to them by the voters and the only question is the size of the Labour majority? Or is it a more workmanlike affair where the new boundaries, swingback, traditional distrust of Labour on the economy, lack of enthusiasm for them ('Starmer no Blair'), shy tories, tory campaigning prowess plus their media attack dogs, etc etc, where these factors combine to limit the Labour win to something wafer thin or to largest party in a hung parliament?
You have to jump one way or the other and you have to do this now (and be right obviously!) in order to secure big betting value. I've done this fwiw. I've jumped and where I've landed is slap bang in the 1st camp. Clear Labour win. Outright majority nailed on. More chance of a landslide than of a hung parliament.
Wishful thinking.
Starmer had a mare this weekend. If he can't think on his feet during a campaign he will shed the lead Theresa May style. The Conservatives' LauraK owned him yesterday. Blair was much better with Sophie Ridge.
I don't think so, Pete, because the bias I always have to fight in myself is the other way. The inclination to bet in a manner that will create profit if what I don't want to happen happens. The old 'emotional hedge'. Route to the poorhouse.
And Sunak's no Blair either, is he? In fact the only Blair is Blair.
Do you remember the shock on the morning of Friday 10th April 1992? That sick pit in your stomach when you realised another 5 years of Conservative Governments was in view. I do, so I am bracing myself this time.
And this next Conservative Government of controlled decline will be so much worse without the constraints of the EU to keep it in check. We will come out of it with the most illiberal and populist administration we have ever seen in the UK, and somewhere around mid 2027 the reigns will be taken over by Badenoch, Braverman or Jenrick. Brace, brace!
This is quite a revealing comment. You were quite happy with the EU as it enforced constraints on the UK that would not be democratically voted for by the UK. Surely that is highly illiberal?
I think you will find that across Europe there are much more populist and illiberal elected governments than in the UK.
By being signed up to EU some of the more illiberal populist nonsense that Braverman (in her dreams it would seem) might like to adopt into law would have been unavailable.
Reintroducing capital punishment for taxi- driver nonces or strafing the boats might get a cynical vote or two, but it would have been frowned upon by Brussels. Good old Brussels!
But, with respect, that answer is revealing of the problem so deeply embedded within what likes to see itself as the liberal centre-left that it doesn't even recognise what others can clearly see.
You're not making the case against these policies on their merits but would rather rely on external constraints to prevent their implementation. You assume that they're so self-evidently right that this isn't needed and yet also recognise that a popularly-elected government might want to do so anyway: there's a huge disconnect there. Inevitably, that situation also makes that external constraint unpopular, leading to a wider crisis of legitimacy for it and leaving the field free for the populist right to dominate.
All because you won't get down and engage in the debate in the first place.
With a (now) sixty plus majority, Suella can do what the hell she likes (so long as the courts can be cowed into submission). Take Rwanda. It wasn't in the 2019 manifesto, but she is going for it anyway. And if it falls at the ECHR what will she do? Take a parliamentary vote to leave the ECHR. I don't remember seeing that in the 2019 manifesto.
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.
It's not a question of engaging with Lee Anderson; it's a question of engaging with the public and explaining from first principles why Lee Anderson is wrong. Enough of the hand-wringing: get involved - it's not someone else's* job. You can't just impose policies; you have to win the public over to them.
* 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.
FPT
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)
Fiscal reality does not mean he cannot tax more.
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.
We’ve already become a pretty high tax government under the Tories, so as to pay for our insane debt. Starmer might be able to nudge it a little more but I can’t see him moving dramatically. Wealth taxes are a disaster as Hollande discovered
Starmer has basically zero room to maneuver
Not quite true.
Labour have the option of a much closer, smoother import-export relationship with the EU, which is a strongly pro-growth position.
The swivel-eyed nutters in the Tory Party make this near impossible for Sunak.
So there's a key point of difference there (although you are right about the general fiscal limitations on Sir Keir).
How is he going to get these much smoother trading relations? Without ceding something dramatic?
In Northern News Jamie Driscoll (North of Tyne Mayor) has resigned from the Labour party and is now fundraising to run as an independent candidate.
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.
O/T What happened to Cerberus ? Predicted to hit 48 in Sicily this weekend just gone but didn't get much above 40 iirc.
The dog that didn't bark ?
Last week we were forecast one day of 47 degrees. The max was 39. I think the doom mongers are now using 'feels like' - sensación térmica - to get headlines.
In Northern News Jamie Driscoll (North of Tyne Mayor) has resigned from the Labour party and is now fundraising to run as an independent candidate.
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.
This train is stopping at EVERY SINGLE STATION en route to krakow. As I stand here, miserable, by the reeking khaki.
It’s a tiny glimpse of what it was like on the cattle trucks to Auschwitz. Except, arguably, WORSE - coz at least those trains went direct and were airier
O/T What happened to Cerberus ? Predicted to hit 48 in Sicily this weekend just gone but didn't get much above 40 iirc.
The dog that didn't bark ?
Last week we were forecast one day of 47 degrees. The max was 39. I think the doom mongers are now using 'feels like' - sensación térmica - to get headlines.
I’ve only got 39ºC today, albeit rather humid. Everywhere else gets a heatwave, while what’s usually one of the hottest places on the planet in July doesn’t even make 40ºC. Not that I’m complaining too much, it’s just about bearable outside today.
In Northern News Jamie Driscoll (North of Tyne Mayor) has resigned from the Labour party and is now fundraising to run as an independent candidate.
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.
This train is stopping at EVERY SINGLE STATION en route to krakow. As I stand here, miserable, by the reeking khaki.
It’s a tiny glimpse of what it was like on the cattle trucks to Auschwitz. Except, arguably, WORSE - coz at least those trains went direct and were airier
You really are a drama queen.
"It’s a tiny glimpse of what it was like on the cattle trucks to Auschwitz. Except, arguably, WORSE - coz at least those trains went direct and were airier".
O/T What happened to Cerberus ? Predicted to hit 48 in Sicily this weekend just gone but didn't get much above 40 iirc.
The dog that didn't bark ?
Last week we were forecast one day of 47 degrees. The max was 39. I think the doom mongers are now using 'feels like' - sensación térmica - to get headlines.
Where did that forecast of 47C come from? Was it a reputable agency or just in the press, quoting "ESA"?
This train is stopping at EVERY SINGLE STATION en route to krakow. As I stand here, miserable, by the reeking khaki.
It’s a tiny glimpse of what it was like on the cattle trucks to Auschwitz. Except, arguably, WORSE - coz at least those trains went direct and were airier
The contrast between “High Speed” and “other” in much of Europe is marked.
Get off the TGV and the local trains in France make the local trains in the U.K. look like starships….
This train is stopping at EVERY SINGLE STATION en route to krakow. As I stand here, miserable, by the reeking khaki.
It’s a tiny glimpse of what it was like on the cattle trucks to Auschwitz. Except, arguably, WORSE - coz at least those trains went direct and were airier
Frankly it is expected and anything other than 3 loses would be a huge surprise
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
What if the Men in Grey Tenas short-circuit the process again so we don't have to have the whole carnival of filth? Bullet in the head for Sunak (aim carefully, his head is the size of a hazelnut), swift coronation for Rat Eyes or anybody else reality adjacent then a swift GE before the voters' OODA cycle re-asserts itself.
Except the kind of people who hate Sunak really really hate Hunt. Or anyone else who still has some grip on reality and arithmetic.
God knows who gets the gig if Sunak gets run over by a bus tomorrow.
Dowden straight away, I guess. Then watch as Nads steps aside to let Boris run in her seat and make an immediate bid for the leadership.
Johnson would lose that by-election!
I agree. Ps re Spain the PSOE improvement in the polls is largely at the expense of their more left wing partners.
'So: prediction time. I currently expect Labour to end up with 40-44 per cent of the vote, while the Tories win 31-35 per cent. If the result falls within those ranges, Labour will be the largest party, and has a 50-50 chance of securing an overall majority. However, these should be regarded like medium-term economic forecasts, subject to revision—and just as likely to be as wrong as the Bank of England’s recent inflation forecasts. Like economic forecasts, I shall be updating my predictions as the election draw near.'
Whether it's the great Kellner or somebody on here I'm never that bowled over by the above sort of thing. It's not a prediction at all. It's an artful way of discussing the election in a way that sounds authoritative and carries almost no risk of being wrong. You just keep updating your 'prediction' in line with the polls, caveated with the relevant error margins, and end up where almost everyone else is, never having gone anywhere exciting on the route there.
Not the way. Not for punditry and definitely not for betting. The way is to decide which of 2 camps you're in. Is this a sweeping change election where the Tories get their asses handed to them by the voters and the only question is the size of the Labour majority? Or is it a more workmanlike affair where the new boundaries, swingback, traditional distrust of Labour on the economy, lack of enthusiasm for them ('Starmer no Blair'), shy tories, tory campaigning prowess plus their media attack dogs, etc etc, where these factors combine to limit the Labour win to something wafer thin or to largest party in a hung parliament?
You have to jump one way or the other and you have to do this now (and be right obviously!) in order to secure big betting value. I've done this fwiw. I've jumped and where I've landed is slap bang in the 1st camp. Clear Labour win. Outright majority nailed on. More chance of a landslide than of a hung parliament.
Wishful thinking.
Starmer had a mare this weekend. If he can't think on his feet during a campaign he will shed the lead Theresa May style. The Conservatives' LauraK owned him yesterday. Blair was much better with Sophie Ridge.
I don't think so, Pete, because the bias I always have to fight in myself is the other way. The inclination to bet in a manner that will create profit if what I don't want to happen happens. The old 'emotional hedge'. Route to the poorhouse.
And Sunak's no Blair either, is he? In fact the only Blair is Blair.
Do you remember the shock on the morning of Friday 10th April 1992? That sick pit in your stomach when you realised another 5 years of Conservative Governments was in view. I do, so I am bracing myself this time.
And this next Conservative Government of controlled decline will be so much worse without the constraints of the EU to keep it in check. We will come out of it with the most illiberal and populist administration we have ever seen in the UK, and somewhere around mid 2027 the reigns will be taken over by Badenoch, Braverman or Jenrick. Brace, brace!
This is quite a revealing comment. You were quite happy with the EU as it enforced constraints on the UK that would not be democratically voted for by the UK. Surely that is highly illiberal?
I think you will find that across Europe there are much more populist and illiberal elected governments than in the UK.
By being signed up to EU some of the more illiberal populist nonsense that Braverman (in her dreams it would seem) might like to adopt into law would have been unavailable.
Reintroducing capital punishment for taxi- driver nonces or strafing the boats might get a cynical vote or two, but it would have been frowned upon by Brussels. Good old Brussels!
But, with respect, that answer is revealing of the problem so deeply embedded within what likes to see itself as the liberal centre-left that it doesn't even recognise what others can clearly see.
You're not making the case against these policies on their merits but would rather rely on external constraints to prevent their implementation. You assume that they're so self-evidently right that this isn't needed and yet also recognise that a popularly-elected government might want to do so anyway: there's a huge disconnect there. Inevitably, that situation also makes that external constraint unpopular, leading to a wider crisis of legitimacy for it and leaving the field free for the populist right to dominate.
All because you won't get down and engage in the debate in the first place.
With a (now) sixty plus majority, Suella can do what the hell she likes (so long as the courts can be cowed into submission). Take Rwanda. It wasn't in the 2019 manifesto, but she is going for it anyway. And if it falls at the ECHR what will she do? Take a parliamentary vote to leave the ECHR. I don't remember seeing that in the 2019 manifesto.
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.
It's not a question of engaging with Lee Anderson; it's a question of engaging with the public and explaining from first principles why Lee Anderson is wrong. Enough of the hand-wringing: get involved - it's not someone else's* job. You can't just impose policies; you have to win the public over to them.
* 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.
FPT
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)
Fiscal reality does not mean he cannot tax more.
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.
We’ve already become a pretty high tax government under the Tories, so as to pay for our insane debt. Starmer might be able to nudge it a little more but I can’t see him moving dramatically. Wealth taxes are a disaster as Hollande discovered
Starmer has basically zero room to maneuver
Not quite true.
Labour have the option of a much closer, smoother import-export relationship with the EU, which is a strongly pro-growth position.
The swivel-eyed nutters in the Tory Party make this near impossible for Sunak.
So there's a key point of difference there (although you are right about the general fiscal limitations on Sir Keir).
How is he going to get these much smoother trading relations? Without ceding something dramatic?
A simplfied visa regime for young people, dynamic alignment with EU regulation, bilateral cooperation on border controls...
There's a lot we could do, that would be in the UK's power without going back into the EU or EEA.
In Northern News Jamie Driscoll (North of Tyne Mayor) has resigned from the Labour party and is now fundraising to run as an independent candidate.
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.
'So: prediction time. I currently expect Labour to end up with 40-44 per cent of the vote, while the Tories win 31-35 per cent. If the result falls within those ranges, Labour will be the largest party, and has a 50-50 chance of securing an overall majority. However, these should be regarded like medium-term economic forecasts, subject to revision—and just as likely to be as wrong as the Bank of England’s recent inflation forecasts. Like economic forecasts, I shall be updating my predictions as the election draw near.'
Whether it's the great Kellner or somebody on here I'm never that bowled over by the above sort of thing. It's not a prediction at all. It's an artful way of discussing the election in a way that sounds authoritative and carries almost no risk of being wrong. You just keep updating your 'prediction' in line with the polls, caveated with the relevant error margins, and end up where almost everyone else is, never having gone anywhere exciting on the route there.
Not the way. Not for punditry and definitely not for betting. The way is to decide which of 2 camps you're in. Is this a sweeping change election where the Tories get their asses handed to them by the voters and the only question is the size of the Labour majority? Or is it a more workmanlike affair where the new boundaries, swingback, traditional distrust of Labour on the economy, lack of enthusiasm for them ('Starmer no Blair'), shy tories, tory campaigning prowess plus their media attack dogs, etc etc, where these factors combine to limit the Labour win to something wafer thin or to largest party in a hung parliament?
You have to jump one way or the other and you have to do this now (and be right obviously!) in order to secure big betting value. I've done this fwiw. I've jumped and where I've landed is slap bang in the 1st camp. Clear Labour win. Outright majority nailed on. More chance of a landslide than of a hung parliament.
Wishful thinking.
Starmer had a mare this weekend. If he can't think on his feet during a campaign he will shed the lead Theresa May style. The Conservatives' LauraK owned him yesterday. Blair was much better with Sophie Ridge.
I don't think so, Pete, because the bias I always have to fight in myself is the other way. The inclination to bet in a manner that will create profit if what I don't want to happen happens. The old 'emotional hedge'. Route to the poorhouse.
And Sunak's no Blair either, is he? In fact the only Blair is Blair.
Do you remember the shock on the morning of Friday 10th April 1992? That sick pit in your stomach when you realised another 5 years of Conservative Governments was in view. I do, so I am bracing myself this time.
And this next Conservative Government of controlled decline will be so much worse without the constraints of the EU to keep it in check. We will come out of it with the most illiberal and populist administration we have ever seen in the UK, and somewhere around mid 2027 the reigns will be taken over by Badenoch, Braverman or Jenrick. Brace, brace!
This is quite a revealing comment. You were quite happy with the EU as it enforced constraints on the UK that would not be democratically voted for by the UK. Surely that is highly illiberal?
I think you will find that across Europe there are much more populist and illiberal elected governments than in the UK.
By being signed up to EU some of the more illiberal populist nonsense that Braverman (in her dreams it would seem) might like to adopt into law would have been unavailable.
Reintroducing capital punishment for taxi- driver nonces or strafing the boats might get a cynical vote or two, but it would have been frowned upon by Brussels. Good old Brussels!
But, with respect, that answer is revealing of the problem so deeply embedded within what likes to see itself as the liberal centre-left that it doesn't even recognise what others can clearly see.
You're not making the case against these policies on their merits but would rather rely on external constraints to prevent their implementation. You assume that they're so self-evidently right that this isn't needed and yet also recognise that a popularly-elected government might want to do so anyway: there's a huge disconnect there. Inevitably, that situation also makes that external constraint unpopular, leading to a wider crisis of legitimacy for it and leaving the field free for the populist right to dominate.
All because you won't get down and engage in the debate in the first place.
With a (now) sixty plus majority, Suella can do what the hell she likes (so long as the courts can be cowed into submission). Take Rwanda. It wasn't in the 2019 manifesto, but she is going for it anyway. And if it falls at the ECHR what will she do? Take a parliamentary vote to leave the ECHR. I don't remember seeing that in the 2019 manifesto.
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.
It's not a question of engaging with Lee Anderson; it's a question of engaging with the public and explaining from first principles why Lee Anderson is wrong. Enough of the hand-wringing: get involved - it's not someone else's* job. You can't just impose policies; you have to win the public over to them.
* 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.
FPT
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)
Fiscal reality does not mean he cannot tax more.
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.
We’ve already become a pretty high tax government under the Tories, so as to pay for our insane debt. Starmer might be able to nudge it a little more but I can’t see him moving dramatically. Wealth taxes are a disaster as Hollande discovered
Starmer has basically zero room to maneuver
Not quite true.
Labour have the option of a much closer, smoother import-export relationship with the EU, which is a strongly pro-growth position.
The swivel-eyed nutters in the Tory Party make this near impossible for Sunak.
So there's a key point of difference there (although you are right about the general fiscal limitations on Sir Keir).
How is he going to get these much smoother trading relations? Without ceding something dramatic?
He'll wait a bit, before conceding something dramatic sounding. It won't be dramatic really, because the Johnson-Frost approach was to grab loads of freedoms it's not practical to use. Sell it right, and it might even be popular. Talking of which,
This is just utterly ridiculous now. Remain ahead of Leave 55-31, and nearly a fifth of Leavers would vote Remain. You can't run a country like this.
I'm not saying it's time to rejoin, or even for a significant political party to talk about it. Or even the Lib Dems. But you can't be mentally healthy for a country to have a defining political issue that has happened, that is this unpopular, and that just sits there, unremarked.
It's as if an old English sheepdog has done a poo on the carpet and everyone decides to just not talk about it. If there isn't a Theatre of the Absurd play with that plotline, there ought to be.
In Northern News Jamie Driscoll (North of Tyne Mayor) has resigned from the Labour party and is now fundraising to run as an independent candidate.
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.
This train is stopping at EVERY SINGLE STATION en route to krakow. As I stand here, miserable, by the reeking khaki.
It’s a tiny glimpse of what it was like on the cattle trucks to Auschwitz. Except, arguably, WORSE - coz at least those trains went direct and were airier
You really are a drama queen.
"It’s a tiny glimpse of what it was like on the cattle trucks to Auschwitz. Except, arguably, WORSE - coz at least those trains went direct and were airier".
And why would you persist in standing next to a smelly soldier ?
I wonder if they will throw me off the 3rd class “Treblinka Puffer” coz I have a 1st class Pendolino ticket for the same route
A kind of reverse class system
We have reached Ljublin. A rainstorm lashes the carriages and people rush to feel the cool water. Desperate bare hands thrust through gaps. Alsatians bark
Some serious bullshitting from the Post Office on WATO today.
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.
Because the PO did their own prosecutions so the crapness of the evidence wasn't picked up by an independent 3rd party...
@HYUFD is tipping the Tories to win Uxbridge because of the Ulez-x.
DYOR etc etc
Is @HYUFD considered a reliable tipster? Not, I think, on recent form.
I think he is on this but I still think Labour will win, just not as well.
Yes. Right issue for the Tories in the seat but wrong election. I think it'll play much better against Labour in the London Assembly vote. Whether it'll play *for* the Tories is another matter, though presumably only Reform offer much alternative on an anti-ULEZ platform?
This train is stopping at EVERY SINGLE STATION en route to krakow. As I stand here, miserable, by the reeking khaki.
It’s a tiny glimpse of what it was like on the cattle trucks to Auschwitz. Except, arguably, WORSE - coz at least those trains went direct and were airier
Please show a photo so we can share your suffering.
'So: prediction time. I currently expect Labour to end up with 40-44 per cent of the vote, while the Tories win 31-35 per cent. If the result falls within those ranges, Labour will be the largest party, and has a 50-50 chance of securing an overall majority. However, these should be regarded like medium-term economic forecasts, subject to revision—and just as likely to be as wrong as the Bank of England’s recent inflation forecasts. Like economic forecasts, I shall be updating my predictions as the election draw near.'
Whether it's the great Kellner or somebody on here I'm never that bowled over by the above sort of thing. It's not a prediction at all. It's an artful way of discussing the election in a way that sounds authoritative and carries almost no risk of being wrong. You just keep updating your 'prediction' in line with the polls, caveated with the relevant error margins, and end up where almost everyone else is, never having gone anywhere exciting on the route there.
Not the way. Not for punditry and definitely not for betting. The way is to decide which of 2 camps you're in. Is this a sweeping change election where the Tories get their asses handed to them by the voters and the only question is the size of the Labour majority? Or is it a more workmanlike affair where the new boundaries, swingback, traditional distrust of Labour on the economy, lack of enthusiasm for them ('Starmer no Blair'), shy tories, tory campaigning prowess plus their media attack dogs, etc etc, where these factors combine to limit the Labour win to something wafer thin or to largest party in a hung parliament?
You have to jump one way or the other and you have to do this now (and be right obviously!) in order to secure big betting value. I've done this fwiw. I've jumped and where I've landed is slap bang in the 1st camp. Clear Labour win. Outright majority nailed on. More chance of a landslide than of a hung parliament.
Wishful thinking.
Starmer had a mare this weekend. If he can't think on his feet during a campaign he will shed the lead Theresa May style. The Conservatives' LauraK owned him yesterday. Blair was much better with Sophie Ridge.
I don't think so, Pete, because the bias I always have to fight in myself is the other way. The inclination to bet in a manner that will create profit if what I don't want to happen happens. The old 'emotional hedge'. Route to the poorhouse.
And Sunak's no Blair either, is he? In fact the only Blair is Blair.
Do you remember the shock on the morning of Friday 10th April 1992? That sick pit in your stomach when you realised another 5 years of Conservative Governments was in view. I do, so I am bracing myself this time.
And this next Conservative Government of controlled decline will be so much worse without the constraints of the EU to keep it in check. We will come out of it with the most illiberal and populist administration we have ever seen in the UK, and somewhere around mid 2027 the reigns will be taken over by Badenoch, Braverman or Jenrick. Brace, brace!
This is quite a revealing comment. You were quite happy with the EU as it enforced constraints on the UK that would not be democratically voted for by the UK. Surely that is highly illiberal?
I think you will find that across Europe there are much more populist and illiberal elected governments than in the UK.
By being signed up to EU some of the more illiberal populist nonsense that Braverman (in her dreams it would seem) might like to adopt into law would have been unavailable.
Reintroducing capital punishment for taxi- driver nonces or strafing the boats might get a cynical vote or two, but it would have been frowned upon by Brussels. Good old Brussels!
But, with respect, that answer is revealing of the problem so deeply embedded within what likes to see itself as the liberal centre-left that it doesn't even recognise what others can clearly see.
You're not making the case against these policies on their merits but would rather rely on external constraints to prevent their implementation. You assume that they're so self-evidently right that this isn't needed and yet also recognise that a popularly-elected government might want to do so anyway: there's a huge disconnect there. Inevitably, that situation also makes that external constraint unpopular, leading to a wider crisis of legitimacy for it and leaving the field free for the populist right to dominate.
All because you won't get down and engage in the debate in the first place.
With a (now) sixty plus majority, Suella can do what the hell she likes (so long as the courts can be cowed into submission). Take Rwanda. It wasn't in the 2019 manifesto, but she is going for it anyway. And if it falls at the ECHR what will she do? Take a parliamentary vote to leave the ECHR. I don't remember seeing that in the 2019 manifesto.
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.
It's not a question of engaging with Lee Anderson; it's a question of engaging with the public and explaining from first principles why Lee Anderson is wrong. Enough of the hand-wringing: get involved - it's not someone else's* job. You can't just impose policies; you have to win the public over to them.
* 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.
FPT
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)
Fiscal reality does not mean he cannot tax more.
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.
We’ve already become a pretty high tax government under the Tories, so as to pay for our insane debt. Starmer might be able to nudge it a little more but I can’t see him moving dramatically. Wealth taxes are a disaster as Hollande discovered
Starmer has basically zero room to maneuver
Not quite true.
Labour have the option of a much closer, smoother import-export relationship with the EU, which is a strongly pro-growth position.
The swivel-eyed nutters in the Tory Party make this near impossible for Sunak.
So there's a key point of difference there (although you are right about the general fiscal limitations on Sir Keir).
How is he going to get these much smoother trading relations? Without ceding something dramatic?
He'll wait a bit, before conceding something dramatic sounding. It won't be dramatic really, because the Johnson-Frost approach was to grab loads of freedoms it's not practical to use. Sell it right, and it might even be popular. Talking of which,
This is just utterly ridiculous now. Remain ahead of Leave 55-31, and nearly a fifth of Leavers would vote Remain. You can't run a country like this.
I'm not saying it's time to rejoin, or even for a significant political party to talk about it. Or even the Lib Dems. But you can't be mentally healthy for a country to have a defining political issue that has happened, that is this unpopular, and that just sits there, unremarked.
It's as if an old English sheepdog has done a poo on the carpet and everyone decides to just not talk about it. If there isn't a Theatre of the Absurd play with that plotline, there ought to be.
The comparison with Prohibition that was recently shared here was interesting.
I would also note that polling in Czechia and Slovakia shows most think the split was a mistake, and polling in much of Yugoslavia shows most think the break up of that country was a mistake, but we haven't and we won't see any movement towards re-joining in those cases. I don't know that the same factors apply to the UK and the EU, but I don't know that they don't.
This train is stopping at EVERY SINGLE STATION en route to krakow. As I stand here, miserable, by the reeking khaki.
It’s a tiny glimpse of what it was like on the cattle trucks to Auschwitz. Except, arguably, WORSE - coz at least those trains went direct and were airier
Please show a photo so we can share your suffering.
I wonder if they will throw me off the 3rd class “Treblinka Puffer” coz I have a 1st class Pendolino ticket for the same route
A kind of reverse class system
We have reached Ljublin. A rainstorm lashes the carriages and people rush to feel the cool water. Desperate bare hands thrust through gaps. Alsatians bark
When you put it like that, it certainly sounds worse than any train journey through Poland previously taken.
In Northern News Jamie Driscoll (North of Tyne Mayor) has resigned from the Labour party and is now fundraising to run as an independent candidate.
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.
Which is pretty regular for inland Spain any summer. It is many miles from the med where in my zone we are a pleasant 32 degrees, 10 miles inland.
Oh good. If you are comfortable that's the main thing.
Well of course. Many Córdobans will be here too. There is a strong tradition of people from inland Spain , which for many , many years has baked in the summer, having as much of July and August on the coast to chill. I know it doesn't fit your desire to go all apocalypse now but no-one cares.
I wonder if they will throw me off the 3rd class “Treblinka Puffer” coz I have a 1st class Pendolino ticket for the same route
A kind of reverse class system
We have reached Ljublin. A rainstorm lashes the carriages and people rush to feel the cool water. Desperate bare hands thrust through gaps. Alsatians bark
When you put it like that, it certainly sounds worse than any train journey through Poland previously taken.
A small child in a field just drew a meaningful finger across his throat, as the train passed by
@HYUFD is tipping the Tories to win Uxbridge because of the Ulez-x.
DYOR etc etc
Is @HYUFD considered a reliable tipster? Not, I think, on recent form.
I think he is on this but I still think Labour will win, just not as well.
Yes. Right issue for the Tories in the seat but wrong election. I think it'll play much better against Labour in the London Assembly vote. Whether it'll play *for* the Tories is another matter, though presumably only Reform offer much alternative on an anti-ULEZ platform?
What Assembly vote? Do you mean the one in May next year? It will have been in force almost a year by then. People will be used to it.
For the EU market, I cannot see how that front-end design will pass EU frontal impact standards. Might be wrong, though. (I've been saying this since the unveiling of the prototype years ago.)
Some serious bullshitting from the Post Office on WATO today.
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.
The enquiry chair should refer the obstruction to the police, or whoever is the appropriate authority to start the process of locking up the PO management. Appaling behaviour from them.
The relevant legislation empowering such enquiries means that they are the plaything of government. Without the backing of Badenoch, such action isn’t really possible. The chair should perhaps threaten publicly to resign ?
Apologies - inquiries.
It's not contempt of Parliament, sadly. If the Post Office fails to comply with future orders for disclosure under S.21 (the same section used by Hallett in the Covid Inquiry) then those failing to comply face criminal penalties.
But I am afraid that the Judge is weak. He should say that the repeated failures of disclosure by the Post Office coupled with their atrocious - and, frankly, potential criminal behaviour - over the bonuses and what was said in the accounts - means that he can have no confidence in their willingness to comply with this inquiry. The only people able to bring them to book i.e. sack the entire Board without compensation and order them to repay their bonuses in full are the owners i.e. the government and he is therefore recommending this - and compensation in full without further delay to all the postmasters affected (not just those who were wrongly prosecuted but those wrongly made to pay back money they did not owe to the Post Office) to the Secretary of State for Business. Unless such action is taken he does not see any point in him continuing with the inquiry and is therefore resigning.
Of course, this will delay any inquiry or bring it to a complete halt and not bring justice for the postmasters. But they aren't getting that anyway and it is about time the government was blasted for the appalling way it has handled this.
Badenoch had a golden opportunity to show that she had some gumption about her, an opportunity to do good, to do something that pretty much everyone in every party and in the whole country would have welcomed and show that she amounted to more than someone who can criticise those who don't understand the Equality Act. It is not often that relatively unknown junior politicians get such an opportunity. Instead of which she has fluffed it and shown herself to be yet another empty suit.
Christ! Just make me Head of the Inquiry and I'd lay waste like an avenging angel to the Post Office and their disgraceful lawyers......
Nothing has angered and saddened me so much in recent years as this case. It is unbearable to think of the suffering caused by people who did know - and should have known - better.
@HYUFD is tipping the Tories to win Uxbridge because of the Ulez-x.
DYOR etc etc
Is @HYUFD considered a reliable tipster? Not, I think, on recent form.
I think he is on this but I still think Labour will win, just not as well.
Yes. Right issue for the Tories in the seat but wrong election. I think it'll play much better against Labour in the London Assembly vote. Whether it'll play *for* the Tories is another matter, though presumably only Reform offer much alternative on an anti-ULEZ platform?
What Assembly vote? Do you mean the one in May next year? It will have been in force almost a year by then. People will be used to it.
Only another 300 Nick Ferrari phone-ins on Ulez to go before the elections in that case.
For the EU market, I cannot see how that front-end design will pass EU frontal impact standards. Might be wrong, though. (I've been saying this since the unveiling of the prototype years ago.)
It won't and I doubt it was ever intended to. I don't think they're planning to sell it in EU or UK.
For the EU market, I cannot see how that front-end design will pass EU frontal impact standards. Might be wrong, though. (I've been saying this since the unveiling of the prototype years ago.)
It won't and I doubt it was ever intended to. I don't think they're planning to sell it in EU or UK.
It’s the same size as a Ford F150 - which don’t get sold to European markets either. There might be a few private imports.
I’ll probably start to see them next year, in market where large American trucks sell well.
I’m as amazed an anyone else, that the design of the front passes any country’s construction regulations.
Which is pretty regular for inland Spain any summer. It is many miles from the med where in my zone we are a pleasant 32 degrees, 10 miles inland.
Oh good. If you are comfortable that's the main thing.
Well of course. Many Córdobans will be here too. There is a strong tradition of people from inland Spain , which for many , many years has baked in the summer, having as much of July and August on the coast to chill. I know it doesn't fit your desire to go all apocalypse now but no-one cares.
Yes. I note Aemet are issuing extreme heat warnings, but what do they know? Why not drop them a line to explain that?
For the EU market, I cannot see how that front-end design will pass EU frontal impact standards. Might be wrong, though. (I've been saying this since the unveiling of the prototype years ago.)
It won't and I doubt it was ever intended to. I don't think they're planning to sell it in EU or UK.
Which is fair enough. Except I'd expect a company that shouts about the safety of its cars to follow the most rigorous safety standards applicable throughout the world. Even for people who are not in the vehicle...
I wonder if they will throw me off the 3rd class “Treblinka Puffer” coz I have a 1st class Pendolino ticket for the same route
A kind of reverse class system
We have reached Ljublin. A rainstorm lashes the carriages and people rush to feel the cool water. Desperate bare hands thrust through gaps. Alsatians bark
When you put it like that, it certainly sounds worse than any train journey through Poland previously taken.
A small child in a field just drew a meaningful finger across his throat, as the train passed by
I guess that means they’ve shut the buffet car?
I suppose there are many ways of processing and coping with unimaginable horror and humour is as good as any.
Some serious bullshitting from the Post Office on WATO today.
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.
Because the PO did their own prosecutions so the crapness of the evidence wasn't picked up by an independent 3rd party...
When it comes to criminal prosecutions there should be three lines of defence beyond the prosecuting authority to ensure no-one is unjustly convicted: defence lawyers, the judge and the jury. The systematic failure of all these levels in so many cases is noteworthy and troubling. Though of course the PO must have known something was amiss, simply by the number of apparent offences committed by the sorts of people who don't generally commit them. It would not take a statistical genius to notice.
For the EU market, I cannot see how that front-end design will pass EU frontal impact standards. Might be wrong, though. (I've been saying this since the unveiling of the prototype years ago.)
Seems to be late to the party vs F150 and Silverado. Also "The Cybertruck can seat up to six adults inside. Its minimalist interior features a dashboard dominated by a 17in tablet-style touchscreen" sounds exactly like that titanic sub.
Us mere mortals make-do with the suit we got from Debenhams decades ago. On those unfortunate occasions that I have to wear a suit..
Very embarrassing for him. (Insecure) people began to leave their fourth cuff button unbuttoned to show that it was bespoke and not off the shelf. A gentleman (and king, I imagine) shouldn't have to do the same because it is assumed that they have all their suits made.
I wonder if they will throw me off the 3rd class “Treblinka Puffer” coz I have a 1st class Pendolino ticket for the same route
A kind of reverse class system
We have reached Ljublin. A rainstorm lashes the carriages and people rush to feel the cool water. Desperate bare hands thrust through gaps. Alsatians bark
When you put it like that, it certainly sounds worse than any train journey through Poland previously taken.
A small child in a field just drew a meaningful finger across his throat, as the train passed by
I guess that means they’ve shut the buffet car?
Children in remote parts of Poland also follow PB and have views.
Some serious bullshitting from the Post Office on WATO today.
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.
Because the PO did their own prosecutions so the crapness of the evidence wasn't picked up by an independent 3rd party...
When it comes to criminal prosecutions there should be three lines of defence beyond the prosecuting authority to ensure no-one is unjustly convicted: defence lawyers, the judge and the jury. The systematic failure of all these levels in so many cases is noteworthy and troubling. Though of course the PO must have known something was amiss, simply by the number of apparent offences committed by the sorts of people who don't generally commit them. It would not take a statistical genius to notice.
The problem was that the whole point of the new system was to detect fraud, and they’d sold that aspect as part of the business case. So when the “fraud” started showing up, that was exactly what they wanted to see and the management were all happy. No-one thought to take a step back and wonder if the system was working correctly.
Which is pretty regular for inland Spain any summer. It is many miles from the med where in my zone we are a pleasant 32 degrees, 10 miles inland.
Oh good. If you are comfortable that's the main thing.
Well of course. Many Córdobans will be here too. There is a strong tradition of people from inland Spain , which for many , many years has baked in the summer, having as much of July and August on the coast to chill. I know it doesn't fit your desire to go all apocalypse now but no-one cares.
Yes. I note Aemet are issuing extreme heat warnings, but what do they know? Why not drop them a line to explain that?
They do that all the time like all other met agencies everywhere. It helps with the funding. They do the same in the winter when it's chilly inland. I'm still chuckling at the idea that 40+ for Cordoba in July is cataclysmic.
Some serious bullshitting from the Post Office on WATO today.
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.
Because the PO did their own prosecutions so the crapness of the evidence wasn't picked up by an independent 3rd party...
I’m looking forward to the day when those who in charge at the time get cross-examined!
@HYUFD is tipping the Tories to win Uxbridge because of the Ulez-x.
DYOR etc etc
Is @HYUFD considered a reliable tipster? Not, I think, on recent form.
I think he is on this but I still think Labour will win, just not as well.
Yes. Right issue for the Tories in the seat but wrong election. I think it'll play much better against Labour in the London Assembly vote. Whether it'll play *for* the Tories is another matter, though presumably only Reform offer much alternative on an anti-ULEZ platform?
What Assembly vote? Do you mean the one in May next year? It will have been in force almost a year by then. People will be used to it.
Yes, that one. They might be used to it; that doesn't mean they'll have come to like it in places like Uxbridge.
'So: prediction time. I currently expect Labour to end up with 40-44 per cent of the vote, while the Tories win 31-35 per cent. If the result falls within those ranges, Labour will be the largest party, and has a 50-50 chance of securing an overall majority. However, these should be regarded like medium-term economic forecasts, subject to revision—and just as likely to be as wrong as the Bank of England’s recent inflation forecasts. Like economic forecasts, I shall be updating my predictions as the election draw near.'
Whether it's the great Kellner or somebody on here I'm never that bowled over by the above sort of thing. It's not a prediction at all. It's an artful way of discussing the election in a way that sounds authoritative and carries almost no risk of being wrong. You just keep updating your 'prediction' in line with the polls, caveated with the relevant error margins, and end up where almost everyone else is, never having gone anywhere exciting on the route there.
Not the way. Not for punditry and definitely not for betting. The way is to decide which of 2 camps you're in. Is this a sweeping change election where the Tories get their asses handed to them by the voters and the only question is the size of the Labour majority? Or is it a more workmanlike affair where the new boundaries, swingback, traditional distrust of Labour on the economy, lack of enthusiasm for them ('Starmer no Blair'), shy tories, tory campaigning prowess plus their media attack dogs, etc etc, where these factors combine to limit the Labour win to something wafer thin or to largest party in a hung parliament?
You have to jump one way or the other and you have to do this now (and be right obviously!) in order to secure big betting value. I've done this fwiw. I've jumped and where I've landed is slap bang in the 1st camp. Clear Labour win. Outright majority nailed on. More chance of a landslide than of a hung parliament.
Wishful thinking.
Starmer had a mare this weekend. If he can't think on his feet during a campaign he will shed the lead Theresa May style. The Conservatives' LauraK owned him yesterday. Blair was much better with Sophie Ridge.
I don't think so, Pete, because the bias I always have to fight in myself is the other way. The inclination to bet in a manner that will create profit if what I don't want to happen happens. The old 'emotional hedge'. Route to the poorhouse.
And Sunak's no Blair either, is he? In fact the only Blair is Blair.
Do you remember the shock on the morning of Friday 10th April 1992? That sick pit in your stomach when you realised another 5 years of Conservative Governments was in view. I do, so I am bracing myself this time.
And this next Conservative Government of controlled decline will be so much worse without the constraints of the EU to keep it in check. We will come out of it with the most illiberal and populist administration we have ever seen in the UK, and somewhere around mid 2027 the reigns will be taken over by Badenoch, Braverman or Jenrick. Brace, brace!
This is quite a revealing comment. You were quite happy with the EU as it enforced constraints on the UK that would not be democratically voted for by the UK. Surely that is highly illiberal?
I think you will find that across Europe there are much more populist and illiberal elected governments than in the UK.
By being signed up to EU some of the more illiberal populist nonsense that Braverman (in her dreams it would seem) might like to adopt into law would have been unavailable.
Reintroducing capital punishment for taxi- driver nonces or strafing the boats might get a cynical vote or two, but it would have been frowned upon by Brussels. Good old Brussels!
But, with respect, that answer is revealing of the problem so deeply embedded within what likes to see itself as the liberal centre-left that it doesn't even recognise what others can clearly see.
You're not making the case against these policies on their merits but would rather rely on external constraints to prevent their implementation. You assume that they're so self-evidently right that this isn't needed and yet also recognise that a popularly-elected government might want to do so anyway: there's a huge disconnect there. Inevitably, that situation also makes that external constraint unpopular, leading to a wider crisis of legitimacy for it and leaving the field free for the populist right to dominate.
All because you won't get down and engage in the debate in the first place.
With a (now) sixty plus majority, Suella can do what the hell she likes (so long as the courts can be cowed into submission). Take Rwanda. It wasn't in the 2019 manifesto, but she is going for it anyway. And if it falls at the ECHR what will she do? Take a parliamentary vote to leave the ECHR. I don't remember seeing that in the 2019 manifesto.
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.
It's not a question of engaging with Lee Anderson; it's a question of engaging with the public and explaining from first principles why Lee Anderson is wrong. Enough of the hand-wringing: get involved - it's not someone else's* job. You can't just impose policies; you have to win the public over to them.
* 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.
FPT
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)
Fiscal reality does not mean he cannot tax more.
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.
We’ve already become a pretty high tax government under the Tories, so as to pay for our insane debt. Starmer might be able to nudge it a little more but I can’t see him moving dramatically. Wealth taxes are a disaster as Hollande discovered
Starmer has basically zero room to maneuver
Not quite true.
Labour have the option of a much closer, smoother import-export relationship with the EU, which is a strongly pro-growth position.
The swivel-eyed nutters in the Tory Party make this near impossible for Sunak.
So there's a key point of difference there (although you are right about the general fiscal limitations on Sir Keir).
How is he going to get these much smoother trading relations? Without ceding something dramatic?
He'll wait a bit, before conceding something dramatic sounding. It won't be dramatic really, because the Johnson-Frost approach was to grab loads of freedoms it's not practical to use. Sell it right, and it might even be popular. Talking of which,
This is just utterly ridiculous now. Remain ahead of Leave 55-31, and nearly a fifth of Leavers would vote Remain. You can't run a country like this.
I'm not saying it's time to rejoin, or even for a significant political party to talk about it. Or even the Lib Dems. But you can't be mentally healthy for a country to have a defining political issue that has happened, that is this unpopular, and that just sits there, unremarked.
It's as if an old English sheepdog has done a poo on the carpet and everyone decides to just not talk about it. If there isn't a Theatre of the Absurd play with that plotline, there ought to be.
The comparison with Prohibition that was recently shared here was interesting.
I would also note that polling in Czechia and Slovakia shows most think the split was a mistake, and polling in much of Yugoslavia shows most think the break up of that country was a mistake, but we haven't and we won't see any movement towards re-joining in those cases. I don't know that the same factors apply to the UK and the EU, but I don't know that they don't.
Now that we know leaving the SM makes no difference to the migration numbers, it seems to me there would be fairly high levels of reluctant consent for a Norway type deal, which fulfils the Brexit vote to leave the EU, leaves the political/monetary/statelike aspects of it and retains the economic ties.
There is no consent, even reluctant, for the status quo. I hope the Labour manifesto opens the door for a 'full evidence based review' of the deal to pave the way to a new settlement.
@HYUFD is tipping the Tories to win Uxbridge because of the Ulez-x.
DYOR etc etc
Is @HYUFD considered a reliable tipster? Not, I think, on recent form.
I think he is on this but I still think Labour will win, just not as well.
Yes. Right issue for the Tories in the seat but wrong election. I think it'll play much better against Labour in the London Assembly vote. Whether it'll play *for* the Tories is another matter, though presumably only Reform offer much alternative on an anti-ULEZ platform?
What Assembly vote? Do you mean the one in May next year? It will have been in force almost a year by then. People will be used to it.
Only another 300 Nick Ferrari phone-ins on Ulez to go before the elections in that case.
Some serious bullshitting from the Post Office on WATO today.
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.
Because the PO did their own prosecutions so the crapness of the evidence wasn't picked up by an independent 3rd party...
When it comes to criminal prosecutions there should be three lines of defence beyond the prosecuting authority to ensure no-one is unjustly convicted: defence lawyers, the judge and the jury. The systematic failure of all these levels in so many cases is noteworthy and troubling. Though of course the PO must have known something was amiss, simply by the number of apparent offences committed by the sorts of people who don't generally commit them. It would not take a statistical genius to notice.
The problem was that the whole point of the new system was to detect fraud, and they’d sold that aspect as part of the business case. So when the “fraud” started showing up, that was exactly what they wanted to see and the management were all happy. No-one thought to take a step back and wonder if the system was working correctly.
They brought bullshit prosecutions because, bluntly, they bullied a lot of the postmasters into pleading guilty, the courts ruled that computer evidence must be believed not questioned (FFS!!) and the postmasters did not have the financial or legal resources to fight back because we've pretty much abolished any sort of meaningful legal aid.
Also the Post Office's lawyers must not be let off the hook here. As prosecutors, they are legally obliged to provide disclosure of material which helps the defendants and undermines the prosecution's case. For why - see the Irish miscarriages of justice in the 1970's. They failed to do so and they deserve the severest of censure for these professional failings.
Ditto with the internal investigators who did a shit job by not questioning or understanding the technical evidence. This stuff is not easy - I have had month long headaches trying to understand some of the technical trading stuff I was investigating - but it is your fucking job to do it and do it right. Grr .... this makes me so angry. There is really no excuse for what the professionals did here.
Which is pretty regular for inland Spain any summer. It is many miles from the med where in my zone we are a pleasant 32 degrees, 10 miles inland.
Oh good. If you are comfortable that's the main thing.
Well of course. Many Córdobans will be here too. There is a strong tradition of people from inland Spain , which for many , many years has baked in the summer, having as much of July and August on the coast to chill. I know it doesn't fit your desire to go all apocalypse now but no-one cares.
Yes. I note Aemet are issuing extreme heat warnings, but what do they know? Why not drop them a line to explain that?
They do that all the time like all other met agencies everywhere. It helps with the funding. They do the same in the winter when it's chilly inland. I'm still chuckling at the idea that 40+ for Cordoba in July is cataclysmic.
Yes. I have been to Córdoba. I am guessing you haven’t been anywhere much beyond the English and Spanish suburbs you have retired respectively from and to. So less of the stab at worldly wisdom, please.
What's your take on China recording an all time record on the same day Las Vegas equals its own? More chuckling?
'So: prediction time. I currently expect Labour to end up with 40-44 per cent of the vote, while the Tories win 31-35 per cent. If the result falls within those ranges, Labour will be the largest party, and has a 50-50 chance of securing an overall majority. However, these should be regarded like medium-term economic forecasts, subject to revision—and just as likely to be as wrong as the Bank of England’s recent inflation forecasts. Like economic forecasts, I shall be updating my predictions as the election draw near.'
Whether it's the great Kellner or somebody on here I'm never that bowled over by the above sort of thing. It's not a prediction at all. It's an artful way of discussing the election in a way that sounds authoritative and carries almost no risk of being wrong. You just keep updating your 'prediction' in line with the polls, caveated with the relevant error margins, and end up where almost everyone else is, never having gone anywhere exciting on the route there.
Not the way. Not for punditry and definitely not for betting. The way is to decide which of 2 camps you're in. Is this a sweeping change election where the Tories get their asses handed to them by the voters and the only question is the size of the Labour majority? Or is it a more workmanlike affair where the new boundaries, swingback, traditional distrust of Labour on the economy, lack of enthusiasm for them ('Starmer no Blair'), shy tories, tory campaigning prowess plus their media attack dogs, etc etc, where these factors combine to limit the Labour win to something wafer thin or to largest party in a hung parliament?
You have to jump one way or the other and you have to do this now (and be right obviously!) in order to secure big betting value. I've done this fwiw. I've jumped and where I've landed is slap bang in the 1st camp. Clear Labour win. Outright majority nailed on. More chance of a landslide than of a hung parliament.
Wishful thinking.
Starmer had a mare this weekend. If he can't think on his feet during a campaign he will shed the lead Theresa May style. The Conservatives' LauraK owned him yesterday. Blair was much better with Sophie Ridge.
I don't think so, Pete, because the bias I always have to fight in myself is the other way. The inclination to bet in a manner that will create profit if what I don't want to happen happens. The old 'emotional hedge'. Route to the poorhouse.
And Sunak's no Blair either, is he? In fact the only Blair is Blair.
Do you remember the shock on the morning of Friday 10th April 1992? That sick pit in your stomach when you realised another 5 years of Conservative Governments was in view. I do, so I am bracing myself this time.
And this next Conservative Government of controlled decline will be so much worse without the constraints of the EU to keep it in check. We will come out of it with the most illiberal and populist administration we have ever seen in the UK, and somewhere around mid 2027 the reigns will be taken over by Badenoch, Braverman or Jenrick. Brace, brace!
This is quite a revealing comment. You were quite happy with the EU as it enforced constraints on the UK that would not be democratically voted for by the UK. Surely that is highly illiberal?
I think you will find that across Europe there are much more populist and illiberal elected governments than in the UK.
By being signed up to EU some of the more illiberal populist nonsense that Braverman (in her dreams it would seem) might like to adopt into law would have been unavailable.
Reintroducing capital punishment for taxi- driver nonces or strafing the boats might get a cynical vote or two, but it would have been frowned upon by Brussels. Good old Brussels!
But, with respect, that answer is revealing of the problem so deeply embedded within what likes to see itself as the liberal centre-left that it doesn't even recognise what others can clearly see.
You're not making the case against these policies on their merits but would rather rely on external constraints to prevent their implementation. You assume that they're so self-evidently right that this isn't needed and yet also recognise that a popularly-elected government might want to do so anyway: there's a huge disconnect there. Inevitably, that situation also makes that external constraint unpopular, leading to a wider crisis of legitimacy for it and leaving the field free for the populist right to dominate.
All because you won't get down and engage in the debate in the first place.
With a (now) sixty plus majority, Suella can do what the hell she likes (so long as the courts can be cowed into submission). Take Rwanda. It wasn't in the 2019 manifesto, but she is going for it anyway. And if it falls at the ECHR what will she do? Take a parliamentary vote to leave the ECHR. I don't remember seeing that in the 2019 manifesto.
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.
It's not a question of engaging with Lee Anderson; it's a question of engaging with the public and explaining from first principles why Lee Anderson is wrong. Enough of the hand-wringing: get involved - it's not someone else's* job. You can't just impose policies; you have to win the public over to them.
* 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.
FPT
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)
Fiscal reality does not mean he cannot tax more.
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.
We’ve already become a pretty high tax government under the Tories, so as to pay for our insane debt. Starmer might be able to nudge it a little more but I can’t see him moving dramatically. Wealth taxes are a disaster as Hollande discovered
Starmer has basically zero room to maneuver
Not quite true.
Labour have the option of a much closer, smoother import-export relationship with the EU, which is a strongly pro-growth position.
The swivel-eyed nutters in the Tory Party make this near impossible for Sunak.
So there's a key point of difference there (although you are right about the general fiscal limitations on Sir Keir).
How is he going to get these much smoother trading relations? Without ceding something dramatic?
He'll wait a bit, before conceding something dramatic sounding. It won't be dramatic really, because the Johnson-Frost approach was to grab loads of freedoms it's not practical to use. Sell it right, and it might even be popular. Talking of which,
This is just utterly ridiculous now. Remain ahead of Leave 55-31, and nearly a fifth of Leavers would vote Remain. You can't run a country like this.
I'm not saying it's time to rejoin, or even for a significant political party to talk about it. Or even the Lib Dems. But you can't be mentally healthy for a country to have a defining political issue that has happened, that is this unpopular, and that just sits there, unremarked.
It's as if an old English sheepdog has done a poo on the carpet and everyone decides to just not talk about it. If there isn't a Theatre of the Absurd play with that plotline, there ought to be.
The comparison with Prohibition that was recently shared here was interesting.
I would also note that polling in Czechia and Slovakia shows most think the split was a mistake, and polling in much of Yugoslavia shows most think the break up of that country was a mistake, but we haven't and we won't see any movement towards re-joining in those cases. I don't know that the same factors apply to the UK and the EU, but I don't know that they don't.
Perhaps it's just me, but trying to reunite Yugoslavia seems like a considerably more difficult task than re-entering the EU.
'So: prediction time. I currently expect Labour to end up with 40-44 per cent of the vote, while the Tories win 31-35 per cent. If the result falls within those ranges, Labour will be the largest party, and has a 50-50 chance of securing an overall majority. However, these should be regarded like medium-term economic forecasts, subject to revision—and just as likely to be as wrong as the Bank of England’s recent inflation forecasts. Like economic forecasts, I shall be updating my predictions as the election draw near.'
Whether it's the great Kellner or somebody on here I'm never that bowled over by the above sort of thing. It's not a prediction at all. It's an artful way of discussing the election in a way that sounds authoritative and carries almost no risk of being wrong. You just keep updating your 'prediction' in line with the polls, caveated with the relevant error margins, and end up where almost everyone else is, never having gone anywhere exciting on the route there.
Not the way. Not for punditry and definitely not for betting. The way is to decide which of 2 camps you're in. Is this a sweeping change election where the Tories get their asses handed to them by the voters and the only question is the size of the Labour majority? Or is it a more workmanlike affair where the new boundaries, swingback, traditional distrust of Labour on the economy, lack of enthusiasm for them ('Starmer no Blair'), shy tories, tory campaigning prowess plus their media attack dogs, etc etc, where these factors combine to limit the Labour win to something wafer thin or to largest party in a hung parliament?
You have to jump one way or the other and you have to do this now (and be right obviously!) in order to secure big betting value. I've done this fwiw. I've jumped and where I've landed is slap bang in the 1st camp. Clear Labour win. Outright majority nailed on. More chance of a landslide than of a hung parliament.
Wishful thinking.
Starmer had a mare this weekend. If he can't think on his feet during a campaign he will shed the lead Theresa May style. The Conservatives' LauraK owned him yesterday. Blair was much better with Sophie Ridge.
I don't think so, Pete, because the bias I always have to fight in myself is the other way. The inclination to bet in a manner that will create profit if what I don't want to happen happens. The old 'emotional hedge'. Route to the poorhouse.
And Sunak's no Blair either, is he? In fact the only Blair is Blair.
Do you remember the shock on the morning of Friday 10th April 1992? That sick pit in your stomach when you realised another 5 years of Conservative Governments was in view. I do, so I am bracing myself this time.
And this next Conservative Government of controlled decline will be so much worse without the constraints of the EU to keep it in check. We will come out of it with the most illiberal and populist administration we have ever seen in the UK, and somewhere around mid 2027 the reigns will be taken over by Badenoch, Braverman or Jenrick. Brace, brace!
This is quite a revealing comment. You were quite happy with the EU as it enforced constraints on the UK that would not be democratically voted for by the UK. Surely that is highly illiberal?
I think you will find that across Europe there are much more populist and illiberal elected governments than in the UK.
By being signed up to EU some of the more illiberal populist nonsense that Braverman (in her dreams it would seem) might like to adopt into law would have been unavailable.
Reintroducing capital punishment for taxi- driver nonces or strafing the boats might get a cynical vote or two, but it would have been frowned upon by Brussels. Good old Brussels!
But, with respect, that answer is revealing of the problem so deeply embedded within what likes to see itself as the liberal centre-left that it doesn't even recognise what others can clearly see.
You're not making the case against these policies on their merits but would rather rely on external constraints to prevent their implementation. You assume that they're so self-evidently right that this isn't needed and yet also recognise that a popularly-elected government might want to do so anyway: there's a huge disconnect there. Inevitably, that situation also makes that external constraint unpopular, leading to a wider crisis of legitimacy for it and leaving the field free for the populist right to dominate.
All because you won't get down and engage in the debate in the first place.
With a (now) sixty plus majority, Suella can do what the hell she likes (so long as the courts can be cowed into submission). Take Rwanda. It wasn't in the 2019 manifesto, but she is going for it anyway. And if it falls at the ECHR what will she do? Take a parliamentary vote to leave the ECHR. I don't remember seeing that in the 2019 manifesto.
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.
It's not a question of engaging with Lee Anderson; it's a question of engaging with the public and explaining from first principles why Lee Anderson is wrong. Enough of the hand-wringing: get involved - it's not someone else's* job. You can't just impose policies; you have to win the public over to them.
* 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.
FPT
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)
Fiscal reality does not mean he cannot tax more.
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.
We’ve already become a pretty high tax government under the Tories, so as to pay for our insane debt. Starmer might be able to nudge it a little more but I can’t see him moving dramatically. Wealth taxes are a disaster as Hollande discovered
Starmer has basically zero room to maneuver
Not quite true.
Labour have the option of a much closer, smoother import-export relationship with the EU, which is a strongly pro-growth position.
The swivel-eyed nutters in the Tory Party make this near impossible for Sunak.
So there's a key point of difference there (although you are right about the general fiscal limitations on Sir Keir).
How is he going to get these much smoother trading relations? Without ceding something dramatic?
He'll wait a bit, before conceding something dramatic sounding. It won't be dramatic really, because the Johnson-Frost approach was to grab loads of freedoms it's not practical to use. Sell it right, and it might even be popular. Talking of which,
This is just utterly ridiculous now. Remain ahead of Leave 55-31, and nearly a fifth of Leavers would vote Remain. You can't run a country like this.
I'm not saying it's time to rejoin, or even for a significant political party to talk about it. Or even the Lib Dems. But you can't be mentally healthy for a country to have a defining political issue that has happened, that is this unpopular, and that just sits there, unremarked.
It's as if an old English sheepdog has done a poo on the carpet and everyone decides to just not talk about it. If there isn't a Theatre of the Absurd play with that plotline, there ought to be.
Labour (in government) will have an advantage over the Tories on Brexit.
They are allowed to criticise the way it was done. The Tories cannot - they own it.
If polling is still showing these kinds of figures mark my words, a Labour government is going to start laying the groundwork to support closer ties in Term 2.
Some serious bullshitting from the Post Office on WATO today.
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.
Because the PO did their own prosecutions so the crapness of the evidence wasn't picked up by an independent 3rd party...
When it comes to criminal prosecutions there should be three lines of defence beyond the prosecuting authority to ensure no-one is unjustly convicted: defence lawyers, the judge and the jury. The systematic failure of all these levels in so many cases is noteworthy and troubling. Though of course the PO must have known something was amiss, simply by the number of apparent offences committed by the sorts of people who don't generally commit them. It would not take a statistical genius to notice.
The problem was that the whole point of the new system was to detect fraud, and they’d sold that aspect as part of the business case. So when the “fraud” started showing up, that was exactly what they wanted to see and the management were all happy. No-one thought to take a step back and wonder if the system was working correctly.
They brought bullshit prosecutions because, bluntly, they bullied a lot of the postmasters into pleading guilty, the courts ruled that computer evidence must be believed not questioned (FFS!!) and the postmasters did not have the financial or legal resources to fight back because we've pretty much abolished any sort of meaningful legal aid.
Also the Post Office's lawyers must not be let off the hook here. As prosecutors, they are legally obliged to provide disclosure of material which helps the defendants and undermines the prosecution's case. For why - see the Irish miscarriages of justice in the 1970's. They failed to do so and they deserve the severest of censure for these professional failings.
Ditto with the internal investigators who did a shit job by not questioning or understanding the technical evidence. This stuff is not easy - I have had month long headaches trying to understand some of the technical trading stuff I was investigating - but it is your fucking job to do it and do it right. Grr .... this makes me so angry. There is really no excuse for what the professionals did here.
Yes it’s horrible, and plenty of people in my profession and yours are furious at what happened. No excuses, and hundreds of lives ruined, the people involved in the key decisions need to go to prison.
Some serious bullshitting from the Post Office on WATO today.
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.
Because the PO did their own prosecutions so the crapness of the evidence wasn't picked up by an independent 3rd party...
When it comes to criminal prosecutions there should be three lines of defence beyond the prosecuting authority to ensure no-one is unjustly convicted: defence lawyers, the judge and the jury. The systematic failure of all these levels in so many cases is noteworthy and troubling. Though of course the PO must have known something was amiss, simply by the number of apparent offences committed by the sorts of people who don't generally commit them. It would not take a statistical genius to notice.
The problem was that the whole point of the new system was to detect fraud, and they’d sold that aspect as part of the business case. So when the “fraud” started showing up, that was exactly what they wanted to see and the management were all happy. No-one thought to take a step back and wonder if the system was working correctly.
They brought bullshit prosecutions because, bluntly, they bullied a lot of the postmasters into pleading guilty, the courts ruled that computer evidence must be believed not questioned (FFS!!) and the postmasters did not have the financial or legal resources to fight back because we've pretty much abolished any sort of meaningful legal aid.
Also the Post Office's lawyers must not be let off the hook here. As prosecutors, they are legally obliged to provide disclosure of material which helps the defendants and undermines the prosecution's case. For why - see the Irish miscarriages of justice in the 1970's. They failed to do so and they deserve the severest of censure for these professional failings.
Ditto with the internal investigators who did a shit job by not questioning or understanding the technical evidence. This stuff is not easy - I have had month long headaches trying to understand some of the technical trading stuff I was investigating - but it is your fucking job to do it and do it right. Grr .... this makes me so angry. There is really no excuse for what the professionals did here.
Oh the excuse is - life is easy if you do what you are told to do and it's very hard to find a new job if you are fired....
@HYUFD is tipping the Tories to win Uxbridge because of the Ulez-x.
DYOR etc etc
Is @HYUFD considered a reliable tipster? Not, I think, on recent form.
I think he is on this but I still think Labour will win, just not as well.
Yes. Right issue for the Tories in the seat but wrong election. I think it'll play much better against Labour in the London Assembly vote. Whether it'll play *for* the Tories is another matter, though presumably only Reform offer much alternative on an anti-ULEZ platform?
What Assembly vote? Do you mean the one in May next year? It will have been in force almost a year by then. People will be used to it.
Only another 300 Nick Ferrari phone-ins on Ulez to go before the elections in that case.
'So: prediction time. I currently expect Labour to end up with 40-44 per cent of the vote, while the Tories win 31-35 per cent. If the result falls within those ranges, Labour will be the largest party, and has a 50-50 chance of securing an overall majority. However, these should be regarded like medium-term economic forecasts, subject to revision—and just as likely to be as wrong as the Bank of England’s recent inflation forecasts. Like economic forecasts, I shall be updating my predictions as the election draw near.'
Whether it's the great Kellner or somebody on here I'm never that bowled over by the above sort of thing. It's not a prediction at all. It's an artful way of discussing the election in a way that sounds authoritative and carries almost no risk of being wrong. You just keep updating your 'prediction' in line with the polls, caveated with the relevant error margins, and end up where almost everyone else is, never having gone anywhere exciting on the route there.
Not the way. Not for punditry and definitely not for betting. The way is to decide which of 2 camps you're in. Is this a sweeping change election where the Tories get their asses handed to them by the voters and the only question is the size of the Labour majority? Or is it a more workmanlike affair where the new boundaries, swingback, traditional distrust of Labour on the economy, lack of enthusiasm for them ('Starmer no Blair'), shy tories, tory campaigning prowess plus their media attack dogs, etc etc, where these factors combine to limit the Labour win to something wafer thin or to largest party in a hung parliament?
You have to jump one way or the other and you have to do this now (and be right obviously!) in order to secure big betting value. I've done this fwiw. I've jumped and where I've landed is slap bang in the 1st camp. Clear Labour win. Outright majority nailed on. More chance of a landslide than of a hung parliament.
Wishful thinking.
Starmer had a mare this weekend. If he can't think on his feet during a campaign he will shed the lead Theresa May style. The Conservatives' LauraK owned him yesterday. Blair was much better with Sophie Ridge.
I don't think so, Pete, because the bias I always have to fight in myself is the other way. The inclination to bet in a manner that will create profit if what I don't want to happen happens. The old 'emotional hedge'. Route to the poorhouse.
And Sunak's no Blair either, is he? In fact the only Blair is Blair.
Do you remember the shock on the morning of Friday 10th April 1992? That sick pit in your stomach when you realised another 5 years of Conservative Governments was in view. I do, so I am bracing myself this time.
And this next Conservative Government of controlled decline will be so much worse without the constraints of the EU to keep it in check. We will come out of it with the most illiberal and populist administration we have ever seen in the UK, and somewhere around mid 2027 the reigns will be taken over by Badenoch, Braverman or Jenrick. Brace, brace!
This is quite a revealing comment. You were quite happy with the EU as it enforced constraints on the UK that would not be democratically voted for by the UK. Surely that is highly illiberal?
I think you will find that across Europe there are much more populist and illiberal elected governments than in the UK.
By being signed up to EU some of the more illiberal populist nonsense that Braverman (in her dreams it would seem) might like to adopt into law would have been unavailable.
Reintroducing capital punishment for taxi- driver nonces or strafing the boats might get a cynical vote or two, but it would have been frowned upon by Brussels. Good old Brussels!
But, with respect, that answer is revealing of the problem so deeply embedded within what likes to see itself as the liberal centre-left that it doesn't even recognise what others can clearly see.
You're not making the case against these policies on their merits but would rather rely on external constraints to prevent their implementation. You assume that they're so self-evidently right that this isn't needed and yet also recognise that a popularly-elected government might want to do so anyway: there's a huge disconnect there. Inevitably, that situation also makes that external constraint unpopular, leading to a wider crisis of legitimacy for it and leaving the field free for the populist right to dominate.
All because you won't get down and engage in the debate in the first place.
With a (now) sixty plus majority, Suella can do what the hell she likes (so long as the courts can be cowed into submission). Take Rwanda. It wasn't in the 2019 manifesto, but she is going for it anyway. And if it falls at the ECHR what will she do? Take a parliamentary vote to leave the ECHR. I don't remember seeing that in the 2019 manifesto.
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.
It's not a question of engaging with Lee Anderson; it's a question of engaging with the public and explaining from first principles why Lee Anderson is wrong. Enough of the hand-wringing: get involved - it's not someone else's* job. You can't just impose policies; you have to win the public over to them.
* 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.
FPT
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)
Fiscal reality does not mean he cannot tax more.
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.
We’ve already become a pretty high tax government under the Tories, so as to pay for our insane debt. Starmer might be able to nudge it a little more but I can’t see him moving dramatically. Wealth taxes are a disaster as Hollande discovered
Starmer has basically zero room to maneuver
Not quite true.
Labour have the option of a much closer, smoother import-export relationship with the EU, which is a strongly pro-growth position.
The swivel-eyed nutters in the Tory Party make this near impossible for Sunak.
So there's a key point of difference there (although you are right about the general fiscal limitations on Sir Keir).
How is he going to get these much smoother trading relations? Without ceding something dramatic?
He'll wait a bit, before conceding something dramatic sounding. It won't be dramatic really, because the Johnson-Frost approach was to grab loads of freedoms it's not practical to use. Sell it right, and it might even be popular. Talking of which,
This is just utterly ridiculous now. Remain ahead of Leave 55-31, and nearly a fifth of Leavers would vote Remain. You can't run a country like this.
I'm not saying it's time to rejoin, or even for a significant political party to talk about it. Or even the Lib Dems. But you can't be mentally healthy for a country to have a defining political issue that has happened, that is this unpopular, and that just sits there, unremarked.
It's as if an old English sheepdog has done a poo on the carpet and everyone decides to just not talk about it. If there isn't a Theatre of the Absurd play with that plotline, there ought to be.
The comparison with Prohibition that was recently shared here was interesting.
I would also note that polling in Czechia and Slovakia shows most think the split was a mistake, and polling in much of Yugoslavia shows most think the break up of that country was a mistake, but we haven't and we won't see any movement towards re-joining in those cases. I don't know that the same factors apply to the UK and the EU, but I don't know that they don't.
Now that we know leaving the SM makes no difference to the migration numbers, it seems to me there would be fairly high levels of reluctant consent for a Norway type deal, which fulfils the Brexit vote to leave the EU, leaves the political/monetary/statelike aspects of it and retains the economic ties.
There is no consent, even reluctant, for the status quo. I hope the Labour manifesto opens the door for a 'full evidence based review' of the deal to pave the way to a new settlement.
Sticking to the status quo will be unsustainable if (and probably when) when there's a two-thirds majority for Rejoin. It's at that point you'd probably see Labour lose votes to the Lib Dems and Greens if they don't signal they want single market or custom union membership.
'So: prediction time. I currently expect Labour to end up with 40-44 per cent of the vote, while the Tories win 31-35 per cent. If the result falls within those ranges, Labour will be the largest party, and has a 50-50 chance of securing an overall majority. However, these should be regarded like medium-term economic forecasts, subject to revision—and just as likely to be as wrong as the Bank of England’s recent inflation forecasts. Like economic forecasts, I shall be updating my predictions as the election draw near.'
Whether it's the great Kellner or somebody on here I'm never that bowled over by the above sort of thing. It's not a prediction at all. It's an artful way of discussing the election in a way that sounds authoritative and carries almost no risk of being wrong. You just keep updating your 'prediction' in line with the polls, caveated with the relevant error margins, and end up where almost everyone else is, never having gone anywhere exciting on the route there.
Not the way. Not for punditry and definitely not for betting. The way is to decide which of 2 camps you're in. Is this a sweeping change election where the Tories get their asses handed to them by the voters and the only question is the size of the Labour majority? Or is it a more workmanlike affair where the new boundaries, swingback, traditional distrust of Labour on the economy, lack of enthusiasm for them ('Starmer no Blair'), shy tories, tory campaigning prowess plus their media attack dogs, etc etc, where these factors combine to limit the Labour win to something wafer thin or to largest party in a hung parliament?
You have to jump one way or the other and you have to do this now (and be right obviously!) in order to secure big betting value. I've done this fwiw. I've jumped and where I've landed is slap bang in the 1st camp. Clear Labour win. Outright majority nailed on. More chance of a landslide than of a hung parliament.
Wishful thinking.
Starmer had a mare this weekend. If he can't think on his feet during a campaign he will shed the lead Theresa May style. The Conservatives' LauraK owned him yesterday. Blair was much better with Sophie Ridge.
I don't think so, Pete, because the bias I always have to fight in myself is the other way. The inclination to bet in a manner that will create profit if what I don't want to happen happens. The old 'emotional hedge'. Route to the poorhouse.
And Sunak's no Blair either, is he? In fact the only Blair is Blair.
Do you remember the shock on the morning of Friday 10th April 1992? That sick pit in your stomach when you realised another 5 years of Conservative Governments was in view. I do, so I am bracing myself this time.
And this next Conservative Government of controlled decline will be so much worse without the constraints of the EU to keep it in check. We will come out of it with the most illiberal and populist administration we have ever seen in the UK, and somewhere around mid 2027 the reigns will be taken over by Badenoch, Braverman or Jenrick. Brace, brace!
This is quite a revealing comment. You were quite happy with the EU as it enforced constraints on the UK that would not be democratically voted for by the UK. Surely that is highly illiberal?
I think you will find that across Europe there are much more populist and illiberal elected governments than in the UK.
By being signed up to EU some of the more illiberal populist nonsense that Braverman (in her dreams it would seem) might like to adopt into law would have been unavailable.
Reintroducing capital punishment for taxi- driver nonces or strafing the boats might get a cynical vote or two, but it would have been frowned upon by Brussels. Good old Brussels!
But, with respect, that answer is revealing of the problem so deeply embedded within what likes to see itself as the liberal centre-left that it doesn't even recognise what others can clearly see.
You're not making the case against these policies on their merits but would rather rely on external constraints to prevent their implementation. You assume that they're so self-evidently right that this isn't needed and yet also recognise that a popularly-elected government might want to do so anyway: there's a huge disconnect there. Inevitably, that situation also makes that external constraint unpopular, leading to a wider crisis of legitimacy for it and leaving the field free for the populist right to dominate.
All because you won't get down and engage in the debate in the first place.
With a (now) sixty plus majority, Suella can do what the hell she likes (so long as the courts can be cowed into submission). Take Rwanda. It wasn't in the 2019 manifesto, but she is going for it anyway. And if it falls at the ECHR what will she do? Take a parliamentary vote to leave the ECHR. I don't remember seeing that in the 2019 manifesto.
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.
It's not a question of engaging with Lee Anderson; it's a question of engaging with the public and explaining from first principles why Lee Anderson is wrong. Enough of the hand-wringing: get involved - it's not someone else's* job. You can't just impose policies; you have to win the public over to them.
* 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.
FPT
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)
Fiscal reality does not mean he cannot tax more.
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.
We’ve already become a pretty high tax government under the Tories, so as to pay for our insane debt. Starmer might be able to nudge it a little more but I can’t see him moving dramatically. Wealth taxes are a disaster as Hollande discovered
Starmer has basically zero room to maneuver
Not quite true.
Labour have the option of a much closer, smoother import-export relationship with the EU, which is a strongly pro-growth position.
The swivel-eyed nutters in the Tory Party make this near impossible for Sunak.
So there's a key point of difference there (although you are right about the general fiscal limitations on Sir Keir).
How is he going to get these much smoother trading relations? Without ceding something dramatic?
He'll wait a bit, before conceding something dramatic sounding. It won't be dramatic really, because the Johnson-Frost approach was to grab loads of freedoms it's not practical to use. Sell it right, and it might even be popular. Talking of which,
This is just utterly ridiculous now. Remain ahead of Leave 55-31, and nearly a fifth of Leavers would vote Remain. You can't run a country like this.
I'm not saying it's time to rejoin, or even for a significant political party to talk about it. Or even the Lib Dems. But you can't be mentally healthy for a country to have a defining political issue that has happened, that is this unpopular, and that just sits there, unremarked.
It's as if an old English sheepdog has done a poo on the carpet and everyone decides to just not talk about it. If there isn't a Theatre of the Absurd play with that plotline, there ought to be.
The comparison with Prohibition that was recently shared here was interesting.
I would also note that polling in Czechia and Slovakia shows most think the split was a mistake, and polling in much of Yugoslavia shows most think the break up of that country was a mistake, but we haven't and we won't see any movement towards re-joining in those cases. I don't know that the same factors apply to the UK and the EU, but I don't know that they don't.
Now that we know leaving the SM makes no difference to the migration numbers, it seems to me there would be fairly high levels of reluctant consent for a Norway type deal, which fulfils the Brexit vote to leave the EU, leaves the political/monetary/statelike aspects of it and retains the economic ties.
There is no consent, even reluctant, for the status quo. I hope the Labour manifesto opens the door for a 'full evidence based review' of the deal to pave the way to a new settlement.
Sticking to the status quo will be unsustainable if (and probably when) when there's a two-thirds majority for Rejoin. It's at that point you'd probably see Labour lose votes to the Lib Dems and Greens if they don't signal they want single market or custom union membership.
Plaid Cymru, Scottish Greens, SNP also pro-EU parties. Edit: which corroborates your point.
For the EU market, I cannot see how that front-end design will pass EU frontal impact standards. Might be wrong, though. (I've been saying this since the unveiling of the prototype years ago.)
It won't and I doubt it was ever intended to. I don't think they're planning to sell it in EU or UK.
It’s the same size as a Ford F150 - which don’t get sold to European markets either. There might be a few private imports.
I’ll probably start to see them next year, in market where large American trucks sell well.
I’m as amazed an anyone else, that the design of the front passes any country’s construction regulations.
Tesla's CARB filing classifies it as a Medium Truck so F250 class.
It seems a pointless offering in the EU (shortly to include the UK, lol) and I wouldn't be surprised to see it only in LHD only anyway.
Russian dictator Vladimir Putin receives update on situation with KerchBridge from Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu and Russian Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov.
For the EU market, I cannot see how that front-end design will pass EU frontal impact standards. Might be wrong, though. (I've been saying this since the unveiling of the prototype years ago.)
It won't and I doubt it was ever intended to. I don't think they're planning to sell it in EU or UK.
It’s the same size as a Ford F150 - which don’t get sold to European markets either. There might be a few private imports.
I’ll probably start to see them next year, in market where large American trucks sell well.
I’m as amazed an anyone else, that the design of the front passes any country’s construction regulations.
Tesla's CARB filing classifies it as a Medium Truck so F250 class.
It seems a pointless offering in the EU (shortly to include the UK, lol) and I wouldn't be surprised to see it only in LHD only anyway.
Can't see any rhd market except Australia that would be interested in it...
'So: prediction time. I currently expect Labour to end up with 40-44 per cent of the vote, while the Tories win 31-35 per cent. If the result falls within those ranges, Labour will be the largest party, and has a 50-50 chance of securing an overall majority. However, these should be regarded like medium-term economic forecasts, subject to revision—and just as likely to be as wrong as the Bank of England’s recent inflation forecasts. Like economic forecasts, I shall be updating my predictions as the election draw near.'
Whether it's the great Kellner or somebody on here I'm never that bowled over by the above sort of thing. It's not a prediction at all. It's an artful way of discussing the election in a way that sounds authoritative and carries almost no risk of being wrong. You just keep updating your 'prediction' in line with the polls, caveated with the relevant error margins, and end up where almost everyone else is, never having gone anywhere exciting on the route there.
Not the way. Not for punditry and definitely not for betting. The way is to decide which of 2 camps you're in. Is this a sweeping change election where the Tories get their asses handed to them by the voters and the only question is the size of the Labour majority? Or is it a more workmanlike affair where the new boundaries, swingback, traditional distrust of Labour on the economy, lack of enthusiasm for them ('Starmer no Blair'), shy tories, tory campaigning prowess plus their media attack dogs, etc etc, where these factors combine to limit the Labour win to something wafer thin or to largest party in a hung parliament?
You have to jump one way or the other and you have to do this now (and be right obviously!) in order to secure big betting value. I've done this fwiw. I've jumped and where I've landed is slap bang in the 1st camp. Clear Labour win. Outright majority nailed on. More chance of a landslide than of a hung parliament.
Wishful thinking.
Starmer had a mare this weekend. If he can't think on his feet during a campaign he will shed the lead Theresa May style. The Conservatives' LauraK owned him yesterday. Blair was much better with Sophie Ridge.
I don't think so, Pete, because the bias I always have to fight in myself is the other way. The inclination to bet in a manner that will create profit if what I don't want to happen happens. The old 'emotional hedge'. Route to the poorhouse.
And Sunak's no Blair either, is he? In fact the only Blair is Blair.
Do you remember the shock on the morning of Friday 10th April 1992? That sick pit in your stomach when you realised another 5 years of Conservative Governments was in view. I do, so I am bracing myself this time.
And this next Conservative Government of controlled decline will be so much worse without the constraints of the EU to keep it in check. We will come out of it with the most illiberal and populist administration we have ever seen in the UK, and somewhere around mid 2027 the reigns will be taken over by Badenoch, Braverman or Jenrick. Brace, brace!
This is quite a revealing comment. You were quite happy with the EU as it enforced constraints on the UK that would not be democratically voted for by the UK. Surely that is highly illiberal?
I think you will find that across Europe there are much more populist and illiberal elected governments than in the UK.
By being signed up to EU some of the more illiberal populist nonsense that Braverman (in her dreams it would seem) might like to adopt into law would have been unavailable.
Reintroducing capital punishment for taxi- driver nonces or strafing the boats might get a cynical vote or two, but it would have been frowned upon by Brussels. Good old Brussels!
But, with respect, that answer is revealing of the problem so deeply embedded within what likes to see itself as the liberal centre-left that it doesn't even recognise what others can clearly see.
You're not making the case against these policies on their merits but would rather rely on external constraints to prevent their implementation. You assume that they're so self-evidently right that this isn't needed and yet also recognise that a popularly-elected government might want to do so anyway: there's a huge disconnect there. Inevitably, that situation also makes that external constraint unpopular, leading to a wider crisis of legitimacy for it and leaving the field free for the populist right to dominate.
All because you won't get down and engage in the debate in the first place.
With a (now) sixty plus majority, Suella can do what the hell she likes (so long as the courts can be cowed into submission). Take Rwanda. It wasn't in the 2019 manifesto, but she is going for it anyway. And if it falls at the ECHR what will she do? Take a parliamentary vote to leave the ECHR. I don't remember seeing that in the 2019 manifesto.
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.
It's not a question of engaging with Lee Anderson; it's a question of engaging with the public and explaining from first principles why Lee Anderson is wrong. Enough of the hand-wringing: get involved - it's not someone else's* job. You can't just impose policies; you have to win the public over to them.
* 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.
FPT
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)
Fiscal reality does not mean he cannot tax more.
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.
We’ve already become a pretty high tax government under the Tories, so as to pay for our insane debt. Starmer might be able to nudge it a little more but I can’t see him moving dramatically. Wealth taxes are a disaster as Hollande discovered
Starmer has basically zero room to maneuver
Not quite true.
Labour have the option of a much closer, smoother import-export relationship with the EU, which is a strongly pro-growth position.
The swivel-eyed nutters in the Tory Party make this near impossible for Sunak.
So there's a key point of difference there (although you are right about the general fiscal limitations on Sir Keir).
How is he going to get these much smoother trading relations? Without ceding something dramatic?
He'll wait a bit, before conceding something dramatic sounding. It won't be dramatic really, because the Johnson-Frost approach was to grab loads of freedoms it's not practical to use. Sell it right, and it might even be popular. Talking of which,
This is just utterly ridiculous now. Remain ahead of Leave 55-31, and nearly a fifth of Leavers would vote Remain. You can't run a country like this.
I'm not saying it's time to rejoin, or even for a significant political party to talk about it. Or even the Lib Dems. But you can't be mentally healthy for a country to have a defining political issue that has happened, that is this unpopular, and that just sits there, unremarked.
It's as if an old English sheepdog has done a poo on the carpet and everyone decides to just not talk about it. If there isn't a Theatre of the Absurd play with that plotline, there ought to be.
The comparison with Prohibition that was recently shared here was interesting.
I would also note that polling in Czechia and Slovakia shows most think the split was a mistake, and polling in much of Yugoslavia shows most think the break up of that country was a mistake, but we haven't and we won't see any movement towards re-joining in those cases. I don't know that the same factors apply to the UK and the EU, but I don't know that they don't.
Now that we know leaving the SM makes no difference to the migration numbers, it seems to me there would be fairly high levels of reluctant consent for a Norway type deal, which fulfils the Brexit vote to leave the EU, leaves the political/monetary/statelike aspects of it and retains the economic ties.
There is no consent, even reluctant, for the status quo. I hope the Labour manifesto opens the door for a 'full evidence based review' of the deal to pave the way to a new settlement.
Sticking to the status quo will be unsustainable if (and probably when) when there's a two-thirds majority for Rejoin. It's at that point you'd probably see Labour lose votes to the Lib Dems and Greens if they don't signal they want single market or custom union membership.
Also, 67% for "rejoin" leaves only 33% max for "stay out". At the moment "Brexit is in peril and only the Conservatives can defend it" is still just about a viable strategy for the Conservatives given even the tiniest chance. Hence the fear about raising the issue by the other lots. If Brexit becomes much more friendless, that stops working.
Some serious bullshitting from the Post Office on WATO today.
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.
The enquiry chair should refer the obstruction to the police, or whoever is the appropriate authority to start the process of locking up the PO management. Appaling behaviour from them.
The relevant legislation empowering such enquiries means that they are the plaything of government. Without the backing of Badenoch, such action isn’t really possible. The chair should perhaps threaten publicly to resign ?
Apologies - inquiries.
It's not contempt of Parliament, sadly. If the Post Office fails to comply with future orders for disclosure under S.21 (the same section used by Hallett in the Covid Inquiry) then those failing to comply face criminal penalties.
But I am afraid that the Judge is weak. He should say that the repeated failures of disclosure by the Post Office coupled with their atrocious - and, frankly, potential criminal behaviour - over the bonuses and what was said in the accounts - means that he can have no confidence in their willingness to comply with this inquiry. The only people able to bring them to book i.e. sack the entire Board without compensation and order them to repay their bonuses in full are the owners i.e. the government and he is therefore recommending this - and compensation in full without further delay to all the postmasters affected (not just those who were wrongly prosecuted but those wrongly made to pay back money they did not owe to the Post Office) to the Secretary of State for Business. Unless such action is taken he does not see any point in him continuing with the inquiry and is therefore resigning.
Of course, this will delay any inquiry or bring it to a complete halt and not bring justice for the postmasters. But they aren't getting that anyway and it is about time the government was blasted for the appalling way it has handled this.
Badenoch had a golden opportunity to show that she had some gumption about her, an opportunity to do good, to do something that pretty much everyone in every party and in the whole country would have welcomed and show that she amounted to more than someone who can criticise those who don't understand the Equality Act. It is not often that relatively unknown junior politicians get such an opportunity. Instead of which she has fluffed it and shown herself to be yet another empty suit.
Christ! Just make me Head of the Inquiry and I'd lay waste like an avenging angel to the Post Office and their disgraceful lawyers......
Nothing has angered and saddened me so much in recent years as this case. It is unbearable to think of the suffering caused by people who did know - and should have known - better.
Thanks. I quite agree with all of that. What truly infuriates me is the way in which this is being slow timed to oblivion. It's pretty obvious in broad brush terms that a massive injustice has been done. That those responsible are likely to avoid naming, let alone consequences, by the tactic of slow motion paper avalanche, which no one will do anything about, is another humiliation for our criminal justice system.
"The Labour party is delighted that local party members have selected Kim McGuinness as our candidate for the north-east mayoral election next year.
With Keir Starmer as leader, the Labour party is a changed party, relentlessly focused on delivering for working people, and we make no apologies that Labour candidates are held to the highest standard.
The Tories have let our region down, and as Labour mayor, Kim will be the strong voice the north-east deserves"
Can't quite workout if he hit the amount at 2:59 or 3:01 but he's hit the £25,000 target.
I suspect the full £150,000 will be sorted by the end of the month
That was quick…
Not really - a lot of people are very annoyed with the way the Labour nominations played out because Jamie should have been one of the options except Labour's NEC vetoed him on dubious grounds.
And that was before Kim McGuinness was found to have published racist tweets...
Can easily see Jamie being North East Mayor but he'll have work winning the County Durham and South of Tyne votes.
'So: prediction time. I currently expect Labour to end up with 40-44 per cent of the vote, while the Tories win 31-35 per cent. If the result falls within those ranges, Labour will be the largest party, and has a 50-50 chance of securing an overall majority. However, these should be regarded like medium-term economic forecasts, subject to revision—and just as likely to be as wrong as the Bank of England’s recent inflation forecasts. Like economic forecasts, I shall be updating my predictions as the election draw near.'
Whether it's the great Kellner or somebody on here I'm never that bowled over by the above sort of thing. It's not a prediction at all. It's an artful way of discussing the election in a way that sounds authoritative and carries almost no risk of being wrong. You just keep updating your 'prediction' in line with the polls, caveated with the relevant error margins, and end up where almost everyone else is, never having gone anywhere exciting on the route there.
Not the way. Not for punditry and definitely not for betting. The way is to decide which of 2 camps you're in. Is this a sweeping change election where the Tories get their asses handed to them by the voters and the only question is the size of the Labour majority? Or is it a more workmanlike affair where the new boundaries, swingback, traditional distrust of Labour on the economy, lack of enthusiasm for them ('Starmer no Blair'), shy tories, tory campaigning prowess plus their media attack dogs, etc etc, where these factors combine to limit the Labour win to something wafer thin or to largest party in a hung parliament?
You have to jump one way or the other and you have to do this now (and be right obviously!) in order to secure big betting value. I've done this fwiw. I've jumped and where I've landed is slap bang in the 1st camp. Clear Labour win. Outright majority nailed on. More chance of a landslide than of a hung parliament.
Wishful thinking.
Starmer had a mare this weekend. If he can't think on his feet during a campaign he will shed the lead Theresa May style. The Conservatives' LauraK owned him yesterday. Blair was much better with Sophie Ridge.
I don't think so, Pete, because the bias I always have to fight in myself is the other way. The inclination to bet in a manner that will create profit if what I don't want to happen happens. The old 'emotional hedge'. Route to the poorhouse.
And Sunak's no Blair either, is he? In fact the only Blair is Blair.
Do you remember the shock on the morning of Friday 10th April 1992? That sick pit in your stomach when you realised another 5 years of Conservative Governments was in view. I do, so I am bracing myself this time.
And this next Conservative Government of controlled decline will be so much worse without the constraints of the EU to keep it in check. We will come out of it with the most illiberal and populist administration we have ever seen in the UK, and somewhere around mid 2027 the reigns will be taken over by Badenoch, Braverman or Jenrick. Brace, brace!
This is quite a revealing comment. You were quite happy with the EU as it enforced constraints on the UK that would not be democratically voted for by the UK. Surely that is highly illiberal?
I think you will find that across Europe there are much more populist and illiberal elected governments than in the UK.
By being signed up to EU some of the more illiberal populist nonsense that Braverman (in her dreams it would seem) might like to adopt into law would have been unavailable.
Reintroducing capital punishment for taxi- driver nonces or strafing the boats might get a cynical vote or two, but it would have been frowned upon by Brussels. Good old Brussels!
But, with respect, that answer is revealing of the problem so deeply embedded within what likes to see itself as the liberal centre-left that it doesn't even recognise what others can clearly see.
You're not making the case against these policies on their merits but would rather rely on external constraints to prevent their implementation. You assume that they're so self-evidently right that this isn't needed and yet also recognise that a popularly-elected government might want to do so anyway: there's a huge disconnect there. Inevitably, that situation also makes that external constraint unpopular, leading to a wider crisis of legitimacy for it and leaving the field free for the populist right to dominate.
All because you won't get down and engage in the debate in the first place.
With a (now) sixty plus majority, Suella can do what the hell she likes (so long as the courts can be cowed into submission). Take Rwanda. It wasn't in the 2019 manifesto, but she is going for it anyway. And if it falls at the ECHR what will she do? Take a parliamentary vote to leave the ECHR. I don't remember seeing that in the 2019 manifesto.
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.
It's not a question of engaging with Lee Anderson; it's a question of engaging with the public and explaining from first principles why Lee Anderson is wrong. Enough of the hand-wringing: get involved - it's not someone else's* job. You can't just impose policies; you have to win the public over to them.
* 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.
FPT
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)
Fiscal reality does not mean he cannot tax more.
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.
We’ve already become a pretty high tax government under the Tories, so as to pay for our insane debt. Starmer might be able to nudge it a little more but I can’t see him moving dramatically. Wealth taxes are a disaster as Hollande discovered
Starmer has basically zero room to maneuver
Not quite true.
Labour have the option of a much closer, smoother import-export relationship with the EU, which is a strongly pro-growth position.
The swivel-eyed nutters in the Tory Party make this near impossible for Sunak.
So there's a key point of difference there (although you are right about the general fiscal limitations on Sir Keir).
How is he going to get these much smoother trading relations? Without ceding something dramatic?
He'll wait a bit, before conceding something dramatic sounding. It won't be dramatic really, because the Johnson-Frost approach was to grab loads of freedoms it's not practical to use. Sell it right, and it might even be popular. Talking of which,
This is just utterly ridiculous now. Remain ahead of Leave 55-31, and nearly a fifth of Leavers would vote Remain. You can't run a country like this.
I'm not saying it's time to rejoin, or even for a significant political party to talk about it. Or even the Lib Dems. But you can't be mentally healthy for a country to have a defining political issue that has happened, that is this unpopular, and that just sits there, unremarked.
It's as if an old English sheepdog has done a poo on the carpet and everyone decides to just not talk about it. If there isn't a Theatre of the Absurd play with that plotline, there ought to be.
The comparison with Prohibition that was recently shared here was interesting.
I would also note that polling in Czechia and Slovakia shows most think the split was a mistake, and polling in much of Yugoslavia shows most think the break up of that country was a mistake, but we haven't and we won't see any movement towards re-joining in those cases. I don't know that the same factors apply to the UK and the EU, but I don't know that they don't.
Now that we know leaving the SM makes no difference to the migration numbers, it seems to me there would be fairly high levels of reluctant consent for a Norway type deal, which fulfils the Brexit vote to leave the EU, leaves the political/monetary/statelike aspects of it and retains the economic ties.
There is no consent, even reluctant, for the status quo. I hope the Labour manifesto opens the door for a 'full evidence based review' of the deal to pave the way to a new settlement.
Sticking to the status quo will be unsustainable if (and probably when) when there's a two-thirds majority for Rejoin. It's at that point you'd probably see Labour lose votes to the Lib Dems and Greens if they don't signal they want single market or custom union membership.
I know there is no direct link, but since the 2016 Brexit vote the world has changed in big ways. The big blocks in the world are China, India, USA and (only because of geographic size, horribleness and nuclear) Russia. Every one of them appears a worse enemy or less reliable friend than they did in mid 2016. Compared with the rest, the EU/EFTA block now looks like 500,000,000 relatively liberal democrats (despite aberrations) compared even with the USA of the Trump and post Trump era.
In particular if USA proved as unreliable as it might (see The Economist this week on plans for Trump) the UK and France would be crucial nuclear powers. The global picture has changed. The EU block looks more attractive.
A few people below (e.g. @david_herdson) commented that 87% is too high and 'represents value' for betting against.
From my punting POV I wish to beat windward against these winds.
Unless you are betting on the spreads, where you can trade your position, a fixed price bet against the market is only 'value' if you know something the market doesn't.
A 10% chance of winning a political bet does not mean that 1 time in 10 you will win your bet. There is no law of averages. Every time you bet you still only have, according to the market, a 10% chance. When you've lost 9 times in a row, you are no more likely to win the 10th time than 10%.
@HYUFD is tipping the Tories to win Uxbridge because of the Ulez-x.
DYOR etc etc
Is @HYUFD considered a reliable tipster? Not, I think, on recent form.
I think he is on this but I still think Labour will win, just not as well.
Yes. Right issue for the Tories in the seat but wrong election. I think it'll play much better against Labour in the London Assembly vote. Whether it'll play *for* the Tories is another matter, though presumably only Reform offer much alternative on an anti-ULEZ platform?
What Assembly vote? Do you mean the one in May next year? It will have been in force almost a year by then. People will be used to it.
Only another 300 Nick Ferrari phone-ins on Ulez to go before the elections in that case.
HYUFD, how much have you put on the Conservatives to hold Uxbridge? Thanks.
A few people below (e.g. @david_herdson) commented that 87% is too high and 'represents value' for betting against.
From my punting POV I wish to beat windward against these winds.
Unless you are betting on the spreads, where you can trade your position, a fixed price bet against the market is only 'value' if you know something the market doesn't.
A 10% chance of winning a political bet does not mean that 1 time in 10 you will win your bet. There is no law of averages. Every time you bet you still only have, according to the market, a 10% chance. When you've lost 9 times in a row, you are no more likely to win the 10th time than 10%.
luv ya
xx
a fixed price bet against the market is only 'value' if you know something the market doesn't.
politicalbetting.com collectively knows more than the markets. See the recent elections in Turkey. Or a hundred prior examples, for instance Quincel's posts on this market where he's backed Labour at Evens and the Tories at 5-1.
'So: prediction time. I currently expect Labour to end up with 40-44 per cent of the vote, while the Tories win 31-35 per cent. If the result falls within those ranges, Labour will be the largest party, and has a 50-50 chance of securing an overall majority. However, these should be regarded like medium-term economic forecasts, subject to revision—and just as likely to be as wrong as the Bank of England’s recent inflation forecasts. Like economic forecasts, I shall be updating my predictions as the election draw near.'
Whether it's the great Kellner or somebody on here I'm never that bowled over by the above sort of thing. It's not a prediction at all. It's an artful way of discussing the election in a way that sounds authoritative and carries almost no risk of being wrong. You just keep updating your 'prediction' in line with the polls, caveated with the relevant error margins, and end up where almost everyone else is, never having gone anywhere exciting on the route there.
Not the way. Not for punditry and definitely not for betting. The way is to decide which of 2 camps you're in. Is this a sweeping change election where the Tories get their asses handed to them by the voters and the only question is the size of the Labour majority? Or is it a more workmanlike affair where the new boundaries, swingback, traditional distrust of Labour on the economy, lack of enthusiasm for them ('Starmer no Blair'), shy tories, tory campaigning prowess plus their media attack dogs, etc etc, where these factors combine to limit the Labour win to something wafer thin or to largest party in a hung parliament?
You have to jump one way or the other and you have to do this now (and be right obviously!) in order to secure big betting value. I've done this fwiw. I've jumped and where I've landed is slap bang in the 1st camp. Clear Labour win. Outright majority nailed on. More chance of a landslide than of a hung parliament.
Wishful thinking.
Starmer had a mare this weekend. If he can't think on his feet during a campaign he will shed the lead Theresa May style. The Conservatives' LauraK owned him yesterday. Blair was much better with Sophie Ridge.
I don't think so, Pete, because the bias I always have to fight in myself is the other way. The inclination to bet in a manner that will create profit if what I don't want to happen happens. The old 'emotional hedge'. Route to the poorhouse.
And Sunak's no Blair either, is he? In fact the only Blair is Blair.
Do you remember the shock on the morning of Friday 10th April 1992? That sick pit in your stomach when you realised another 5 years of Conservative Governments was in view. I do, so I am bracing myself this time.
And this next Conservative Government of controlled decline will be so much worse without the constraints of the EU to keep it in check. We will come out of it with the most illiberal and populist administration we have ever seen in the UK, and somewhere around mid 2027 the reigns will be taken over by Badenoch, Braverman or Jenrick. Brace, brace!
This is quite a revealing comment. You were quite happy with the EU as it enforced constraints on the UK that would not be democratically voted for by the UK. Surely that is highly illiberal?
I think you will find that across Europe there are much more populist and illiberal elected governments than in the UK.
By being signed up to EU some of the more illiberal populist nonsense that Braverman (in her dreams it would seem) might like to adopt into law would have been unavailable.
Reintroducing capital punishment for taxi- driver nonces or strafing the boats might get a cynical vote or two, but it would have been frowned upon by Brussels. Good old Brussels!
But, with respect, that answer is revealing of the problem so deeply embedded within what likes to see itself as the liberal centre-left that it doesn't even recognise what others can clearly see.
You're not making the case against these policies on their merits but would rather rely on external constraints to prevent their implementation. You assume that they're so self-evidently right that this isn't needed and yet also recognise that a popularly-elected government might want to do so anyway: there's a huge disconnect there. Inevitably, that situation also makes that external constraint unpopular, leading to a wider crisis of legitimacy for it and leaving the field free for the populist right to dominate.
All because you won't get down and engage in the debate in the first place.
With a (now) sixty plus majority, Suella can do what the hell she likes (so long as the courts can be cowed into submission). Take Rwanda. It wasn't in the 2019 manifesto, but she is going for it anyway. And if it falls at the ECHR what will she do? Take a parliamentary vote to leave the ECHR. I don't remember seeing that in the 2019 manifesto.
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.
It's not a question of engaging with Lee Anderson; it's a question of engaging with the public and explaining from first principles why Lee Anderson is wrong. Enough of the hand-wringing: get involved - it's not someone else's* job. You can't just impose policies; you have to win the public over to them.
* 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.
FPT
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)
Fiscal reality does not mean he cannot tax more.
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.
We’ve already become a pretty high tax government under the Tories, so as to pay for our insane debt. Starmer might be able to nudge it a little more but I can’t see him moving dramatically. Wealth taxes are a disaster as Hollande discovered
Starmer has basically zero room to maneuver
Not quite true.
Labour have the option of a much closer, smoother import-export relationship with the EU, which is a strongly pro-growth position.
The swivel-eyed nutters in the Tory Party make this near impossible for Sunak.
So there's a key point of difference there (although you are right about the general fiscal limitations on Sir Keir).
How is he going to get these much smoother trading relations? Without ceding something dramatic?
He'll wait a bit, before conceding something dramatic sounding. It won't be dramatic really, because the Johnson-Frost approach was to grab loads of freedoms it's not practical to use. Sell it right, and it might even be popular. Talking of which,
This is just utterly ridiculous now. Remain ahead of Leave 55-31, and nearly a fifth of Leavers would vote Remain. You can't run a country like this.
I'm not saying it's time to rejoin, or even for a significant political party to talk about it. Or even the Lib Dems. But you can't be mentally healthy for a country to have a defining political issue that has happened, that is this unpopular, and that just sits there, unremarked.
It's as if an old English sheepdog has done a poo on the carpet and everyone decides to just not talk about it. If there isn't a Theatre of the Absurd play with that plotline, there ought to be.
The comparison with Prohibition that was recently shared here was interesting.
I would also note that polling in Czechia and Slovakia shows most think the split was a mistake, and polling in much of Yugoslavia shows most think the break up of that country was a mistake, but we haven't and we won't see any movement towards re-joining in those cases. I don't know that the same factors apply to the UK and the EU, but I don't know that they don't.
Now that we know leaving the SM makes no difference to the migration numbers, it seems to me there would be fairly high levels of reluctant consent for a Norway type deal, which fulfils the Brexit vote to leave the EU, leaves the political/monetary/statelike aspects of it and retains the economic ties.
There is no consent, even reluctant, for the status quo. I hope the Labour manifesto opens the door for a 'full evidence based review' of the deal to pave the way to a new settlement.
Sticking to the status quo will be unsustainable if (and probably when) when there's a two-thirds majority for Rejoin. It's at that point you'd probably see Labour lose votes to the Lib Dems and Greens if they don't signal they want single market or custom union membership.
I know there is no direct link, but since the 2016 Brexit vote the world has changed in big ways. The big blocks in the world are China, India, USA and (only because of geographic size, horribleness and nuclear) Russia. Every one of them appears a worse enemy or less reliable friend than they did in mid 2016. Compared with the rest, the EU/EFTA block now looks like 500,000,000 relatively liberal democrats (despite aberrations) compared even with the USA of the Trump and post Trump era.
In particular if USA proved as unreliable as it might (see The Economist this week on plans for Trump) the UK and France would be crucial nuclear powers. The global picture has changed. The EU block looks more attractive.
The other way of looking at developments since than is that far from achieving strategic autonomy, the EU looks like a de facto US protectorate for the foreseeable future. France and Germany will never be trusted on European security by the Eastern European states that are becoming increasingly wealthy and powerful and see "European autonomy" as a trojan horse for Russian interests.
For me. the thing about the Post Office scandal is the following:
We - the generally law-abiding, want-no-trouble folks - assume that miscarriages of justice happen to other people. Sometimes slightly dodgy people, who live close to the line of the law. When they do happen, we tut and forget it (wrongly, I might add).
The PO scandal is different. People like you or I, going about their business, got utterly screwed over by their employers and the state. Lives were ruined. And the response has been extremely lacklustre.
As I say, this sort of reaction is wrong: we should abhor miscarriages of justice whoever they occur to. But this scandal brings it close to home for many.
@HYUFD is tipping the Tories to win Uxbridge because of the Ulez-x.
DYOR etc etc
Is @HYUFD considered a reliable tipster? Not, I think, on recent form.
I think he is on this but I still think Labour will win, just not as well.
Yes. Right issue for the Tories in the seat but wrong election. I think it'll play much better against Labour in the London Assembly vote. Whether it'll play *for* the Tories is another matter, though presumably only Reform offer much alternative on an anti-ULEZ platform?
What Assembly vote? Do you mean the one in May next year? It will have been in force almost a year by then. People will be used to it.
Only another 300 Nick Ferrari phone-ins on Ulez to go before the elections in that case.
HYUFD, how much have you put on the Conservatives to hold Uxbridge? Thanks.
A few people below (e.g. @david_herdson) commented that 87% is too high and 'represents value' for betting against.
From my punting POV I wish to beat windward against these winds.
Unless you are betting on the spreads, where you can trade your position, a fixed price bet against the market is only 'value' if you know something the market doesn't.
A 10% chance of winning a political bet does not mean that 1 time in 10 you will win your bet. There is no law of averages. Every time you bet you still only have, according to the market, a 10% chance. When you've lost 9 times in a row, you are no more likely to win the 10th time than 10%.
luv ya
xx
a fixed price bet against the market is only 'value' if you know something the market doesn't.
politicalbetting.com collectively knows more than the markets. See the recent elections in Turkey. Or a hundred prior examples, for instance Quincel's posts on this market where he's backed Labour at Evens and the Tories at 5-1.
We certainly know more than the market on RFK Jr’s price.
A few people below (e.g. @david_herdson) commented that 87% is too high and 'represents value' for betting against.
From my punting POV I wish to beat windward against these winds.
Unless you are betting on the spreads, where you can trade your position, a fixed price bet against the market is only 'value' if you know something the market doesn't.
A 10% chance of winning a political bet does not mean that 1 time in 10 you will win your bet. There is no law of averages. Every time you bet you still only have, according to the market, a 10% chance. When you've lost 9 times in a row, you are no more likely to win the 10th time than 10%.
luv ya
xx
There's a law of large numbers which says pretty much what the law of averages says. I doubt adults on a betting site need telling that it has nothing to say about any one particular bet.
How do you mean, you can only "trade your position" in spread bets?
"The Labour party is delighted that local party members have selected Kim McGuinness as our candidate for the north-east mayoral election next year.
With Keir Starmer as leader, the Labour party is a changed party, relentlessly focused on delivering for working people, and we make no apologies that Labour candidates are held to the highest standard.
Translation
The Labour Party NEC is delighted to have imposed a Socialist free long list for members to chose from as our candidate for the north-east mayoral election next year.
With Keir Starmer as leader, the Labour party is a changed party, relentlessly focused on factionalism, and we make no apologies that Labour candidates are held to the highest standard if they are Socialists. Centrists of course are not held to the same standard and even racist tweets are acceptable as long as they fit within the hierarchy of racism of SKS's Party
Can't quite workout if he hit the amount at 2:59 or 3:01 but he's hit the £25,000 target.
I suspect the full £150,000 will be sorted by the end of the month
That was quick…
Not really - a lot of people are very annoyed with the way the Labour nominations played out because Jamie should have been one of the options except Labour's NEC vetoed him on dubious grounds.
And that was before Kim McGuinness was found to have published racist tweets...
Can easily see Jamie being North East Mayor but he'll have work winning the County Durham and South of Tyne votes.
He's got my vote. Terrible the way he was treated by Labour.
As for McGuinness, not heard that. Presumably that will mean Labour will now reject her candidacy.
Comments
In this case the consequence is, the next time you go to the pub you will have £20 less to spend on a round.
What I couldn't understand about the recent forecasts of 48C etc was why ESA had anything to do with it.
I think I've twigged what has happened. Someone has mixed up air temperature with ground temperature haven't they?
https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/Copernicus/Sentinel-3/Europe_braces_for_sweltering_July
Ground temperature is what is showing on the front page map. Not standard air temperature.
"This image uses data from the Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission’s radiometer instrument and shows the land surface temperature across Europe and parts of northern Africa in the morning of 10 July 2023. Land surface temperatures hit 46°C in Rome, Italy, while Madrid and Seville reached 46 and 47°C, respectively."
Triple negative.
Which is most welcome.
Labour have the option of a much closer, smoother import-export relationship with the EU, which is a strongly pro-growth position.
The swivel-eyed nutters in the Tory Party make this near impossible for Sunak.
So there's a key point of difference there (although you are right about the general fiscal limitations on Sir Keir).
Unfortunately, having booked my lovely first class berth to krakow, I got on the wrong train and I am now on the slow non aircon branch line and will be standing and perspiring by the bogs for the next five hours. If they don’t throw me off for having the wrong ticket
It’s like interailing all over again
It’s a tiny glimpse of what it was like on the cattle trucks to Auschwitz. Except, arguably, WORSE - coz at least those trains went direct and were airier
"It’s a tiny glimpse of what it was like on the cattle trucks to Auschwitz. Except, arguably, WORSE - coz at least those trains went direct and were airier".
https://www.gofundme.com/f/jamie-driscoll-for-north-east-mayor?member=26933721&sharetype=teams&utm_campaign=p_na+share-sheet&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_source=customer
Get off the TGV and the local trains in France make the local trains in the U.K. look like starships….
Illusion shattered. I assumed one or more of your lackeys would take care of ushering you to your seat.
I bet your buddy Sean is on the other train, laughing at you
There's a lot we could do, that would be in the UK's power without going back into the EU or EEA.
This is just utterly ridiculous now. Remain ahead of Leave 55-31, and nearly a fifth of Leavers would vote Remain. You can't run a country like this.
https://twitter.com/gsoh31/status/1680923037539901440
I'm not saying it's time to rejoin, or even for a significant political party to talk about it. Or even the Lib Dems. But you can't be mentally healthy for a country to have a defining political issue that has happened, that is this unpopular, and that just sits there, unremarked.
It's as if an old English sheepdog has done a poo on the carpet and everyone decides to just not talk about it. If there isn't a Theatre of the Absurd play with that plotline, there ought to be.
A kind of reverse class system
We have reached Ljublin. A rainstorm lashes the carriages and people rush to feel the cool water. Desperate bare hands thrust through gaps. Alsatians bark
If only the Germans had a word for schadenfreude.
The first production-spec Cybertruck has been released. Production is set to begin by end Q3 2023. Do you have a view as our resident Tesla person?
I would also note that polling in Czechia and Slovakia shows most think the split was a mistake, and polling in much of Yugoslavia shows most think the break up of that country was a mistake, but we haven't and we won't see any movement towards re-joining in those cases. I don't know that the same factors apply to the UK and the EU, but I don't know that they don't.
I’ve managed to squeeze into a corridor
I guess that means they’ve shut the buffet car?
But I am afraid that the Judge is weak. He should say that the repeated failures of disclosure by the Post Office coupled with their atrocious - and, frankly, potential criminal behaviour - over the bonuses and what was said in the accounts - means that he can have no confidence in their willingness to comply with this inquiry. The only people able to bring them to book i.e. sack the entire Board without compensation and order them to repay their bonuses in full are the owners i.e. the government and he is therefore recommending this - and compensation in full without further delay to all the postmasters affected (not just those who were wrongly prosecuted but those wrongly made to pay back money they did not owe to the Post Office) to the Secretary of State for Business. Unless such action is taken he does not see any point in him continuing with the inquiry and is therefore resigning.
Of course, this will delay any inquiry or bring it to a complete halt and not bring justice for the postmasters. But they aren't getting that anyway and it is about time the government was blasted for the appalling way it has handled this.
Badenoch had a golden opportunity to show that she had some gumption about her, an opportunity to do good, to do something that pretty much everyone in every party and in the whole country would have welcomed and show that she amounted to more than someone who can criticise those who don't understand the Equality Act. It is not often that relatively unknown junior politicians get such an opportunity. Instead of which she has fluffed it and shown herself to be yet another empty suit.
Christ! Just make me Head of the Inquiry and I'd lay waste like an avenging angel to the Post Office and their disgraceful lawyers......
Nothing has angered and saddened me so much in recent years as this case. It is unbearable to think of the suffering caused by people who did know - and should have known - better.
https://twitter.com/dieworkwear/status/1680871501824917504
Us mere mortals make-do with the suit we got from Debenhams decades ago. On those unfortunate occasions that I have to wear a suit..
I’ll probably start to see them next year, in market where large American trucks sell well.
I’m as amazed an anyone else, that the design of the front passes any country’s construction regulations.
Let us know your discoveries.
It is not a KEVII situation.
What makes you think anyone cares?
There is no consent, even reluctant, for the status quo. I hope the Labour manifesto opens the door for a 'full evidence based review' of the deal to pave the way to a new settlement.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-sadiq-khan-ulez-byelection-labour-b2371453.html
Also the Post Office's lawyers must not be let off the hook here. As prosecutors, they are legally obliged to provide disclosure of material which helps the defendants and undermines the prosecution's case. For why - see the Irish miscarriages of justice in the 1970's. They failed to do so and they deserve the severest of censure for these professional failings.
Ditto with the internal investigators who did a shit job by not questioning or understanding the technical evidence. This stuff is not easy - I have had month long headaches trying to understand some of the technical trading stuff I was investigating - but it is your fucking job to do it and do it right. Grr .... this makes me so angry. There is really no excuse for what the professionals did here.
What's your take on China recording an all time record on the same day Las Vegas equals its own? More chuckling?
They are allowed to criticise the way it was done. The Tories cannot - they own it.
If polling is still showing these kinds of figures mark my words, a Labour government is going to start laying the groundwork to support closer ties in Term 2.
Whether that extends to rejoin, I’m not sure.
It seems a pointless offering in the EU (shortly to include the UK, lol) and I wouldn't be surprised to see it only in LHD only anyway.
Luke has overlooked her social media faux Pas!
https://twitter.com/OL1UR/status/1680938606917984259/photo/1
I suspect the full £150,000 will be sorted by the end of the month
Russian dictator Vladimir Putin receives update on situation with KerchBridge from Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu and Russian Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov.
https://twitter.com/Euan_MacDonald/status/1680873326137180161
Can you point out where else I've mentioned it, or is this another of your pointless rando attacks on me?
If the latter, get a life.
I quite agree with all of that. What truly infuriates me is the way in which this is being slow timed to oblivion.
It's pretty obvious in broad brush terms that a massive injustice has been done. That those responsible are likely to avoid naming, let alone consequences, by the tactic of slow motion paper avalanche, which no one will do anything about, is another humiliation for our criminal justice system.
"The Labour party is delighted that local party members have selected Kim McGuinness as our candidate for the north-east mayoral election next year.
With Keir Starmer as leader, the Labour party is a changed party, relentlessly focused on delivering for working people, and we make no apologies that Labour candidates are held to the highest standard.
The Tories have let our region down, and as Labour mayor, Kim will be the strong voice the north-east deserves"
Meanwhile Lab have selected the "fuck off i'm not a Gypsy" woman
And that was before Kim McGuinness was found to have published racist tweets...
Can easily see Jamie being North East Mayor but he'll have work winning the County Durham and South of Tyne votes.
In particular if USA proved as unreliable as it might (see The Economist this week on plans for Trump) the UK and France would be crucial nuclear powers. The global picture has changed. The EU block looks more attractive.
A few people below (e.g. @david_herdson) commented that 87% is too high and 'represents value' for betting against.
From my punting POV I wish to beat windward against these winds.
Unless you are betting on the spreads, where you can trade your position, a fixed price bet against the market is only 'value' if you know something the market doesn't.
A 10% chance of winning a political bet does not mean that 1 time in 10 you will win your bet. There is no law of averages. Every time you bet you still only have, according to the market, a 10% chance. When you've lost 9 times in a row, you are no more likely to win the 10th time than 10%.
luv ya
xx
politicalbetting.com collectively knows more than the markets. See the recent elections in Turkey. Or a hundred prior examples, for instance Quincel's posts on this market where he's backed Labour at Evens and the Tories at 5-1.
We - the generally law-abiding, want-no-trouble folks - assume that miscarriages of justice happen to other people. Sometimes slightly dodgy people, who live close to the line of the law. When they do happen, we tut and forget it (wrongly, I might add).
The PO scandal is different. People like you or I, going about their business, got utterly screwed over by their employers and the state. Lives were ruined. And the response has been extremely lacklustre.
As I say, this sort of reaction is wrong: we should abhor miscarriages of justice whoever they occur to. But this scandal brings it close to home for many.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jul/17/mystery-object-wa-beach-green-head-western-australia
How do you mean, you can only "trade your position" in spread bets?
The Labour Party NEC is delighted to have imposed a Socialist free long list for members to chose from as our candidate for the north-east mayoral election next year.
With Keir Starmer as leader, the Labour party is a changed party, relentlessly focused on factionalism, and we make no apologies that Labour candidates are held to the highest standard if they are Socialists. Centrists of course are not held to the same standard and even racist tweets are acceptable as long as they fit within the hierarchy of racism of SKS's Party
As for McGuinness, not heard that. Presumably that will mean Labour will now reject her candidacy.