On the day the papers are headlining the terrible fires in Greece the UK government wants to water down its climate pledges !
They'll be lucky to have water.
I'd be very worried if I lived in some of the drier parts of south-eastern England, with population going up and **** all having been done about water conservation never mind gathering of late.
Pretty clear that the water companies were more busy dishing out dividends than investing in infrastructure.
At what point does the Met need to be given the RUC treatment? It’s clear that the recent change of leadership has made little difference, and there are still weekly stories of sex offenders from the force.
Foreign Office minister Andrew Mitchell sounding shaky on the future of the 2030 petrol car ban: ‘All I can tell you is that it’s in place… I can’t prophesy the future’
Postponing the 2030 ban on new ICE cars is a bit like inflation, out of the control of government. If the manufacturers no longer make ICE cars we can no longer buy them. Unless in its lurch back to the 1950s the Government could reintroduce the half timbered Morris Minor alongside hanging.
Why would the manufacturers stop making ICE vehicles when the USA likely isn't going to bother with a hard stop and the last I heard about the EU it is looking at 2035 for an implementation ? The only reason to stop making otherwise european spec vehicles with right hand drive would be as a direct result of UK gov't edicts.
This is a very good tip by @MikeSmithson by the way.
Sadiq has made a huge error with ulez. However, I suspect it will blow over and that he will be re-elected.
It ought to serve as a warning to Labour. It's during their third term in office that they will combine arrogance with fatigue.
History repeats itself. Has to. No one listens.
If you apply the Uxbridge swing to the London Mayoral contest, then Khan wins by the biggest margin in any London Mayoral contest.
That’s the point. ULEZ may have allowed the Tories to hold on in Uxbridge, but there was still a substantial swing against them. The underlying unpopularity of the Conservatives is the bigger factor. Lay Hall.
Or perhaps ULEZ was the reason for the massive swing 😉
I don't know much about London politics, but in a city where 46% of households don't have access to a car at all, I can't see how this can become an issue for Khan without a hysterical misinformation campaign from CCHQ. 90% of those cars are ULEZ compliant, so we are talking about less than 5% of households.
Car ownership is also strongly correlated with earnings and location. The people with cars are already likely to be voting Tory. You might find that non-ULEZ compliant cars are more likely to be owned by poorer drivers, but I'd guess this is still a very small number of possible labour voters.
There are some recent stats that suggest cycling had now overtaken driving in parts of central London, so like with all Pigou taxes, ULEZ will become a smaller issue going forward.
Outer London is different. In many suburbs, car usage isn’t optional. In addition, the assumption is that the next stage of ULEZ is coming. So it’s far more than the immediately effected drivers.
The overall car taxation in London, on parking, congestion charge etc. is nothing if you can afford an EV. Otherwise you pay.
Poorer drivers in outer London suburbs are not paying the congestion charge. I live inside the South Circular and work in central London, and I have never in my life paid the congestion charge.
That’s because it has priced people out of driving into the centre. Unless you are in an EV. In which case, you roll in and park at a charging point.
Driving into the centre was already difficult because of traffic and, most of all, parking. Public transport into the centre is very good. So, no, people haven't been priced out of driving into the centre: people weren't driving into the centre much in the first place.
At what point does the Met need to be given the RUC treatment? It’s clear that the recent change of leadership has made little difference, and there are still weekly stories of sex offenders from the force.
I think the answer to this one was about 1985.......
Foreign Office minister Andrew Mitchell sounding shaky on the future of the 2030 petrol car ban: ‘All I can tell you is that it’s in place… I can’t prophesy the future’
Postponing the 2030 ban on new ICE cars is a bit like inflation, out of the control of government. If the manufacturers no longer make ICE cars we can no longer buy them. Unless in its lurch back to the 1950s the Government could reintroduce the half timbered Morris Minor alongside hanging.
Which is why, if this date is to be moved outside the voters time scale, it will have to be done soon. That it will happen has been clear since Uxbridge. Whether or not makers will fully play ball won't be the central issue until after the 2024 election.
Foreign Office minister Andrew Mitchell sounding shaky on the future of the 2030 petrol car ban: ‘All I can tell you is that it’s in place… I can’t prophesy the future’
Postponing the 2030 ban on new ICE cars is a bit like inflation, out of the control of government. If the manufacturers no longer make ICE cars we can no longer buy them. Unless in its lurch back to the 1950s the Government could reintroduce the half timbered Morris Minor alongside hanging.
And definitely with the original wooden trim. None of the new-fangled plastic substitute.
And reintroduce the EM-2 in the original wood furniture. Forward to the past!
Ironically, with the trend to something heavier than 5.56, and mass production by machining from solid being standard, it would actually be a pretty good idea.
At what point does the Met need to be given the RUC treatment? It’s clear that the recent change of leadership has made little difference, and there are still weekly stories of sex offenders from the force.
I think the answer to this one was about 1985.......
The word 'crisis ' has become a meaningless joke word.
Should only be used to mean "turning point in a disease" like in the good old days.
I don't think that's quite what the nothing to see here crew have in mind.
Well, stranded holidaymakers is the kind of story that has been sensationalised for as long as I can remember, I guess linking it to global heating is what some people don't like? There definitely seems to be an increase in wildfires in the Mediterranean (and elsewhere) in recent years, and an increased likelihood of heatwaves. But to really hit the headlines it has to affect British holidaymakers.
With a special credit to TUI. It takes epic cynicism to keep flying holidaymakers into an inferno, with the aim of avoiding liability and refund.
And lots of photos of young ladies and yummy mummies wearing very little to add to the human interest in the DM etc.
“Flaunting their curves.” The DM will be especially vigilant for pictures of attractive lesbian couples.
This is a very good tip by @MikeSmithson by the way.
Sadiq has made a huge error with ulez. However, I suspect it will blow over and that he will be re-elected.
It ought to serve as a warning to Labour. It's during their third term in office that they will combine arrogance with fatigue.
History repeats itself. Has to. No one listens.
If you apply the Uxbridge swing to the London Mayoral contest, then Khan wins by the biggest margin in any London Mayoral contest.
That’s the point. ULEZ may have allowed the Tories to hold on in Uxbridge, but there was still a substantial swing against them. The underlying unpopularity of the Conservatives is the bigger factor. Lay Hall.
Or perhaps ULEZ was the reason for the massive swing 😉
I don't know much about London politics, but in a city where 46% of households don't have access to a car at all, I can't see how this can become an issue for Khan without a hysterical misinformation campaign from CCHQ. 90% of those cars are ULEZ compliant, so we are talking about less than 5% of households.
Car ownership is also strongly correlated with earnings and location. The people with cars are already likely to be voting Tory. You might find that non-ULEZ compliant cars are more likely to be owned by poorer drivers, but I'd guess this is still a very small number of possible labour voters.
There are some recent stats that suggest cycling had now overtaken driving in parts of central London, so like with all Pigou taxes, ULEZ will become a smaller issue going forward.
Outer London is different. In many suburbs, car usage isn’t optional. In addition, the assumption is that the next stage of ULEZ is coming. So it’s far more than the immediately effected drivers.
The overall car taxation in London, on parking, congestion charge etc. is nothing if you can afford an EV. Otherwise you pay.
Poorer drivers in outer London suburbs are not paying the congestion charge. I live inside the South Circular and work in central London, and I have never in my life paid the congestion charge.
That’s because it has priced people out of driving into the centre. Unless you are in an EV. In which case, you roll in and park at a charging point.
Growing up in London I don't recall us ever driving into the centre at all in the decades before the congestion charge was introduced. Ah, no, there was one occasion in the late-80s or early-90s when we drove in to St Pancras to collect my grandparents from the train station.
I expect for a one-off journey like that we would have simply paid the charge rather than be deterred.
Point being they driving into central London was a foolish thing to contemplate even before the congestion charge that you'd only do if you had a special reason to do so.
At what point does the Met need to be given the RUC treatment? It’s clear that the recent change of leadership has made little difference, and there are still weekly stories of sex offenders from the force.
“The best time to plant a tree was 30 years ago. The second best time is now.”
This is a very good tip by @MikeSmithson by the way.
Sadiq has made a huge error with ulez. However, I suspect it will blow over and that he will be re-elected.
It ought to serve as a warning to Labour. It's during their third term in office that they will combine arrogance with fatigue.
History repeats itself. Has to. No one listens.
If you apply the Uxbridge swing to the London Mayoral contest, then Khan wins by the biggest margin in any London Mayoral contest.
That’s the point. ULEZ may have allowed the Tories to hold on in Uxbridge, but there was still a substantial swing against them. The underlying unpopularity of the Conservatives is the bigger factor. Lay Hall.
Or perhaps ULEZ was the reason for the massive swing 😉
I don't know much about London politics, but in a city where 46% of households don't have access to a car at all, I can't see how this can become an issue for Khan without a hysterical misinformation campaign from CCHQ. 90% of those cars are ULEZ compliant, so we are talking about less than 5% of households.
Car ownership is also strongly correlated with earnings and location. The people with cars are already likely to be voting Tory. You might find that non-ULEZ compliant cars are more likely to be owned by poorer drivers, but I'd guess this is still a very small number of possible labour voters.
There are some recent stats that suggest cycling had now overtaken driving in parts of central London, so like with all Pigou taxes, ULEZ will become a smaller issue going forward.
Outer London is different. In many suburbs, car usage isn’t optional. In addition, the assumption is that the next stage of ULEZ is coming. So it’s far more than the immediately effected drivers.
The overall car taxation in London, on parking, congestion charge etc. is nothing if you can afford an EV. Otherwise you pay.
Poorer drivers in outer London suburbs are not paying the congestion charge. I live inside the South Circular and work in central London, and I have never in my life paid the congestion charge.
That’s because it has priced people out of driving into the centre. Unless you are in an EV. In which case, you roll in and park at a charging point.
That's the whole point of the congestion charge. It's the reason why there isn't permanent gridlock in central London. Pigouvian taxes like the congestion charge are a smart way to deal with externalities, of which vehicle congestion is a prime example. It's not a right vs left issue. It's a smart vs dumb issue. If the Tories want to make Pigouvian taxes a wedge issue it is just another example of their stupidity and intellectual bankruptcy.
The word 'crisis ' has become a meaningless joke word.
Should only be used to mean "turning point in a disease" like in the good old days.
I don't think that's quite what the nothing to see here crew have in mind.
Well, stranded holidaymakers is the kind of story that has been sensationalised for as long as I can remember, I guess linking it to global heating is what some people don't like? There definitely seems to be an increase in wildfires in the Mediterranean (and elsewhere) in recent years, and an increased likelihood of heatwaves. But to really hit the headlines it has to affect British holidaymakers.
The unprecedented (in human memory) wave of forest fires around the globe of recent years is arguably a symptom of a climate inflection point - albeit one that's measured in years and decades, rather than days and weeks.
In the particular case of Rhodes, has it ever had fires this large ?
The photos from Rhodes are extraordinary. What with small ship evacuations from beaches, repatriation flights and people walking 12 hours carrying luggage to reach them, it is The Road meets Dunkirk. Or, it's just hot weather, what do you expect in Greece in July?
The nothing to see faction really need to point to a precedent.
I certainly won’t be complaining about a wet summer.
Foreign Office minister Andrew Mitchell sounding shaky on the future of the 2030 petrol car ban: ‘All I can tell you is that it’s in place… I can’t prophesy the future’
Postponing the 2030 ban on new ICE cars is a bit like inflation, out of the control of government. If the manufacturers no longer make ICE cars we can no longer buy them. Unless in its lurch back to the 1950s the Government could reintroduce the half timbered Morris Minor alongside hanging.
Why would the manufacturers stop making ICE vehicles when the USA likely isn't going to bother with a hard stop and the last I heard about the EU it is looking at 2035 for an implementation ? The only reason to stop making otherwise european spec vehicles with right hand drive would be as a direct result of UK gov't edicts.
We could harmonise our automotive safety with the USA rather than Europe I suppose. But my point still stands. There will be a very limited choice when most manufacturers have already earmarked late this decade for an all electric line up. A road full of F350 trucks would be carnage
Foreign Office minister Andrew Mitchell sounding shaky on the future of the 2030 petrol car ban: ‘All I can tell you is that it’s in place… I can’t prophesy the future’
Postponing the 2030 ban on new ICE cars is a bit like inflation, out of the control of government. If the manufacturers no longer make ICE cars we can no longer buy them. Unless in its lurch back to the 1950s the Government could reintroduce the half timbered Morris Minor alongside hanging.
And definitely with the original wooden trim. None of the new-fangled plastic substitute.
And reintroduce the EM-2 in the original wood furniture. Forward to the past!
Ironically, with the trend to something heavier than 5.56, and mass production by machining from solid being standard, it would actually be a pretty good idea.
You wouldn't need to worry about moss growing on the rifle's furniture, if the NCOs were any good, in contrast to the Morris Countryman whose woodwork often seemed to carry a small flora around with it.
At what point does the Met need to be given the RUC treatment? It’s clear that the recent change of leadership has made little difference, and there are still weekly stories of sex offenders from the force.
“The best time to plant a tree was 30 years ago. The second best time is now.”
A classic of this genre was Nick Clegg rubbishing building new nuclear power stations because they would only be ready at some far distant date. 2023…..
An genuinely interesting and enlightening discussion I was listening to last week, American car journalist Matt Farah talking to Henry Grabar, author of a book called “Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains The World”. Mostly American in nature, but with a lot of references to other countries.
This is a very good tip by @MikeSmithson by the way.
Sadiq has made a huge error with ulez. However, I suspect it will blow over and that he will be re-elected.
It ought to serve as a warning to Labour. It's during their third term in office that they will combine arrogance with fatigue.
History repeats itself. Has to. No one listens.
If you apply the Uxbridge swing to the London Mayoral contest, then Khan wins by the biggest margin in any London Mayoral contest.
That’s the point. ULEZ may have allowed the Tories to hold on in Uxbridge, but there was still a substantial swing against them. The underlying unpopularity of the Conservatives is the bigger factor. Lay Hall.
Or perhaps ULEZ was the reason for the massive swing 😉
I don't know much about London politics, but in a city where 46% of households don't have access to a car at all, I can't see how this can become an issue for Khan without a hysterical misinformation campaign from CCHQ. 90% of those cars are ULEZ compliant, so we are talking about less than 5% of households.
Car ownership is also strongly correlated with earnings and location. The people with cars are already likely to be voting Tory. You might find that non-ULEZ compliant cars are more likely to be owned by poorer drivers, but I'd guess this is still a very small number of possible labour voters.
There are some recent stats that suggest cycling had now overtaken driving in parts of central London, so like with all Pigou taxes, ULEZ will become a smaller issue going forward.
Virtually none of the 46% of households without access to a car are changing their vote because of ULEZ.
A lot of the households with non compliant cars are both incentived to turn out and switch.
As with VAT on private schools it makes no difference electorally that the majority support the policy, the switchers are nearly all on one side.
The gap between Khan and Bailey last time was 120,000 votes - a lot more than that will be impacted by ULEZ. If Corbyn joins the show it feels pretty tough for Khan to me. One quirk is that if Corbyn does join, it might prompt other high profile independents as not impossible the winning number could be in the mid twenties.
I reckon we'd have two Corbyns on the ballot for starters.
If Jezza delivered Susan Hall (who has the potential to become the worst mayor ever elected in a major city) to London I suspect outside of his diehard fans who don't care (and never have) about winning elections, he will lose all sympathy and it'll be a bullet to the brain of Labour's hard left for a generation.
This is a very good tip by @MikeSmithson by the way.
Sadiq has made a huge error with ulez. However, I suspect it will blow over and that he will be re-elected.
It ought to serve as a warning to Labour. It's during their third term in office that they will combine arrogance with fatigue.
History repeats itself. Has to. No one listens.
If you apply the Uxbridge swing to the London Mayoral contest, then Khan wins by the biggest margin in any London Mayoral contest.
That’s the point. ULEZ may have allowed the Tories to hold on in Uxbridge, but there was still a substantial swing against them. The underlying unpopularity of the Conservatives is the bigger factor. Lay Hall.
Or perhaps ULEZ was the reason for the massive swing 😉
I don't know much about London politics, but in a city where 46% of households don't have access to a car at all, I can't see how this can become an issue for Khan without a hysterical misinformation campaign from CCHQ. 90% of those cars are ULEZ compliant, so we are talking about less than 5% of households.
Car ownership is also strongly correlated with earnings and location. The people with cars are already likely to be voting Tory. You might find that non-ULEZ compliant cars are more likely to be owned by poorer drivers, but I'd guess this is still a very small number of possible labour voters.
There are some recent stats that suggest cycling had now overtaken driving in parts of central London, so like with all Pigou taxes, ULEZ will become a smaller issue going forward.
Virtually none of the 46% of households without access to a car are changing their vote because of ULEZ.
A lot of the households with non compliant cars are both incentived to turn out and switch.
As with VAT on private schools it makes no difference electorally that the majority support the policy, the switchers are nearly all on one side.
The gap between Khan and Bailey last time was 120,000 votes - a lot more than that will be impacted by ULEZ. If Corbyn joins the show it feels pretty tough for Khan to me. One quirk is that if Corbyn does join, it might prompt other high profile independents as not impossible the winning number could be in the mid twenties.
I reckon we'd have two Corbyns on the ballot for starters.
If Jezza delivered Susan Hall (who has the potential to become the worst mayor ever elected in a major city) to London I suspect outside of his diehard fans who don't care (and never have) about winning elections, he will lose all sympathy and it'll be a bullet to the brain of Labour's hard left for a generation.
How would a Khan v Corbyn v Hall v Johnson work out......
This is a very good tip by @MikeSmithson by the way.
Sadiq has made a huge error with ulez. However, I suspect it will blow over and that he will be re-elected.
It ought to serve as a warning to Labour. It's during their third term in office that they will combine arrogance with fatigue.
History repeats itself. Has to. No one listens.
If you apply the Uxbridge swing to the London Mayoral contest, then Khan wins by the biggest margin in any London Mayoral contest.
That’s the point. ULEZ may have allowed the Tories to hold on in Uxbridge, but there was still a substantial swing against them. The underlying unpopularity of the Conservatives is the bigger factor. Lay Hall.
Or perhaps ULEZ was the reason for the massive swing 😉
I don't know much about London politics, but in a city where 46% of households don't have access to a car at all, I can't see how this can become an issue for Khan without a hysterical misinformation campaign from CCHQ. 90% of those cars are ULEZ compliant, so we are talking about less than 5% of households.
Car ownership is also strongly correlated with earnings and location. The people with cars are already likely to be voting Tory. You might find that non-ULEZ compliant cars are more likely to be owned by poorer drivers, but I'd guess this is still a very small number of possible labour voters.
There are some recent stats that suggest cycling had now overtaken driving in parts of central London, so like with all Pigou taxes, ULEZ will become a smaller issue going forward.
As sure as night follows day the pro ULEZ lobbyists are doing the rounds of the news studios expanding on the virtue of ULEZ and leading the fightback.
Apparently Angela Rayner was saying, was misquoted as saying, ULEZ is coming everywhere. An interesting point of debate for the next election looms.
I expect this to be the precursor of charging per mile as we move away from fuel duty on petrol.
One of very few things that might rescue the Tories at the GE, would be a bunch of city dwellers from Labour pledging a full-on war on cars in the rest of the country.
That would be very silly. The natural successors to fuel duty/VED are axle-load tax and congestion charging.
Yes - so long as one approach replaces the other, and isn’t in addition to it.
I don't see VED going away as registration will still be required. It might become more flat rate.
This is a very good tip by @MikeSmithson by the way.
Sadiq has made a huge error with ulez. However, I suspect it will blow over and that he will be re-elected.
It ought to serve as a warning to Labour. It's during their third term in office that they will combine arrogance with fatigue.
History repeats itself. Has to. No one listens.
If you apply the Uxbridge swing to the London Mayoral contest, then Khan wins by the biggest margin in any London Mayoral contest.
That’s the point. ULEZ may have allowed the Tories to hold on in Uxbridge, but there was still a substantial swing against them. The underlying unpopularity of the Conservatives is the bigger factor. Lay Hall.
Or perhaps ULEZ was the reason for the massive swing 😉
I don't know much about London politics, but in a city where 46% of households don't have access to a car at all, I can't see how this can become an issue for Khan without a hysterical misinformation campaign from CCHQ. 90% of those cars are ULEZ compliant, so we are talking about less than 5% of households.
Car ownership is also strongly correlated with earnings and location. The people with cars are already likely to be voting Tory. You might find that non-ULEZ compliant cars are more likely to be owned by poorer drivers, but I'd guess this is still a very small number of possible labour voters.
There are some recent stats that suggest cycling had now overtaken driving in parts of central London, so like with all Pigou taxes, ULEZ will become a smaller issue going forward.
Virtually none of the 46% of households without access to a car are changing their vote because of ULEZ.
A lot of the households with non compliant cars are both incentived to turn out and switch.
As with VAT on private schools it makes no difference electorally that the majority support the policy, the switchers are nearly all on one side.
The gap between Khan and Bailey last time was 120,000 votes - a lot more than that will be impacted by ULEZ. If Corbyn joins the show it feels pretty tough for Khan to me. One quirk is that if Corbyn does join, it might prompt other high profile independents as not impossible the winning number could be in the mid twenties.
I reckon we'd have two Corbyns on the ballot for starters.
If Jezza delivered Susan Hall (who has the potential to become the worst mayor ever elected in a major city) to London I suspect outside of his diehard fans who don't care (and never have) about winning elections, he will lose all sympathy and it'll be a bullet to the brain of Labour's hard left for a generation.
How would a Khan v Corbyn v Hall v Johnson work out......
Boris as an independent as well? That would be amusing, and an easy win for Khan.
This is a very good tip by @MikeSmithson by the way.
Sadiq has made a huge error with ulez. However, I suspect it will blow over and that he will be re-elected.
It ought to serve as a warning to Labour. It's during their third term in office that they will combine arrogance with fatigue.
History repeats itself. Has to. No one listens.
If you apply the Uxbridge swing to the London Mayoral contest, then Khan wins by the biggest margin in any London Mayoral contest.
That’s the point. ULEZ may have allowed the Tories to hold on in Uxbridge, but there was still a substantial swing against them. The underlying unpopularity of the Conservatives is the bigger factor. Lay Hall.
Or perhaps ULEZ was the reason for the massive swing 😉
I don't know much about London politics, but in a city where 46% of households don't have access to a car at all, I can't see how this can become an issue for Khan without a hysterical misinformation campaign from CCHQ. 90% of those cars are ULEZ compliant, so we are talking about less than 5% of households.
Car ownership is also strongly correlated with earnings and location. The people with cars are already likely to be voting Tory. You might find that non-ULEZ compliant cars are more likely to be owned by poorer drivers, but I'd guess this is still a very small number of possible labour voters.
There are some recent stats that suggest cycling had now overtaken driving in parts of central London, so like with all Pigou taxes, ULEZ will become a smaller issue going forward.
Virtually none of the 46% of households without access to a car are changing their vote because of ULEZ.
A lot of the households with non compliant cars are both incentived to turn out and switch.
As with VAT on private schools it makes no difference electorally that the majority support the policy, the switchers are nearly all on one side.
The gap between Khan and Bailey last time was 120,000 votes - a lot more than that will be impacted by ULEZ. If Corbyn joins the show it feels pretty tough for Khan to me. One quirk is that if Corbyn does join, it might prompt other high profile independents as not impossible the winning number could be in the mid twenties.
I reckon we'd have two Corbyns on the ballot for starters.
If Jezza delivered Susan Hall (who has the potential to become the worst mayor ever elected in a major city) to London I suspect outside of his diehard fans who don't care (and never have) about winning elections, he will lose all sympathy and it'll be a bullet to the brain of Labour's hard left for a generation.
An interesting argument. But I don't see the Conservatives winning unless:two things happen:
- they pick a popular celebrity candidate, of the kind that has such huge advantage in direct elections like this; and - they recover significantly in national politics.
Boris won narrowly in 2008 when he had good name recognition and Labour were hugely unpopular nationally and in 2012, he was the incumbent, which gives a big advantage in being known.
So good luck to OGH but I'm not sure I'd take 7/1 for Susan Who?
Agreed. The other thing would be needing a popular celebrity candidate who isn’t labelable as a party hack.
None of the Mayors of London so far have primarily been identified by their party affiliation, in the public eye. Khan is the closest to a standard party candidate, but most people don’t regard him as Mr Labour.
Khan is a figure of ridicule. ULEZ has given him a bloody nose because he tried to force it through. It won't be forgotten however much Labour apologise.
No. ULEZ policy is good. The implementation sucks, a bit.
Turing this into culture wars bullshit is so Donald Fucking Trump.
1) London needs cleaner air 2) Historically, the best way to achieve this is incrementally improving standards. As proven many times in many places 3) The “ULEZ policy”that was implemented was just one of a number of possible policies. 4) Not being impressed with 3) doesn’t mean opposing 1 & 2.
What makes me laugh about the Tory attempt to create ULEZ as a culture war issue is that it's their policy. Implemented by Boris for inner London, imposed on the suburbs by Grant Shapps. Where the "it will tax motorists" attack is literally what Shapps demanded as part of the TfL bailouts.
If the Tories want to oppose their own policy that's fine. But claiming - as some have - that this is "typical socialism" is painfully deluded. Perhaps Michael Green is a socialist?
Good morning
Looks as if wood burning stoves are environmentally unacceptable and a ban is looking for them
This is a very good tip by @MikeSmithson by the way.
Sadiq has made a huge error with ulez. However, I suspect it will blow over and that he will be re-elected.
It ought to serve as a warning to Labour. It's during their third term in office that they will combine arrogance with fatigue.
History repeats itself. Has to. No one listens.
If you apply the Uxbridge swing to the London Mayoral contest, then Khan wins by the biggest margin in any London Mayoral contest.
That’s the point. ULEZ may have allowed the Tories to hold on in Uxbridge, but there was still a substantial swing against them. The underlying unpopularity of the Conservatives is the bigger factor. Lay Hall.
Or perhaps ULEZ was the reason for the massive swing 😉
I don't know much about London politics, but in a city where 46% of households don't have access to a car at all, I can't see how this can become an issue for Khan without a hysterical misinformation campaign from CCHQ. 90% of those cars are ULEZ compliant, so we are talking about less than 5% of households.
Car ownership is also strongly correlated with earnings and location. The people with cars are already likely to be voting Tory. You might find that non-ULEZ compliant cars are more likely to be owned by poorer drivers, but I'd guess this is still a very small number of possible labour voters.
There are some recent stats that suggest cycling had now overtaken driving in parts of central London, so like with all Pigou taxes, ULEZ will become a smaller issue going forward.
Virtually none of the 46% of households without access to a car are changing their vote because of ULEZ.
A lot of the households with non compliant cars are both incentived to turn out and switch.
As with VAT on private schools it makes no difference electorally that the majority support the policy, the switchers are nearly all on one side.
The gap between Khan and Bailey last time was 120,000 votes - a lot more than that will be impacted by ULEZ. If Corbyn joins the show it feels pretty tough for Khan to me. One quirk is that if Corbyn does join, it might prompt other high profile independents as not impossible the winning number could be in the mid twenties.
I reckon we'd have two Corbyns on the ballot for starters.
If Jezza delivered Susan Hall (who has the potential to become the worst mayor ever elected in a major city) to London I suspect outside of his diehard fans who don't care (and never have) about winning elections, he will lose all sympathy and it'll be a bullet to the brain of Labour's hard left for a generation.
Hall might do something about crime and make London more low tax and business friendly and actually listen to the suburbs
This is a very good tip by @MikeSmithson by the way.
Sadiq has made a huge error with ulez. However, I suspect it will blow over and that he will be re-elected.
It ought to serve as a warning to Labour. It's during their third term in office that they will combine arrogance with fatigue.
History repeats itself. Has to. No one listens.
If you apply the Uxbridge swing to the London Mayoral contest, then Khan wins by the biggest margin in any London Mayoral contest.
That’s the point. ULEZ may have allowed the Tories to hold on in Uxbridge, but there was still a substantial swing against them. The underlying unpopularity of the Conservatives is the bigger factor. Lay Hall.
Or perhaps ULEZ was the reason for the massive swing 😉
I don't know much about London politics, but in a city where 46% of households don't have access to a car at all, I can't see how this can become an issue for Khan without a hysterical misinformation campaign from CCHQ. 90% of those cars are ULEZ compliant, so we are talking about less than 5% of households.
Car ownership is also strongly correlated with earnings and location. The people with cars are already likely to be voting Tory. You might find that non-ULEZ compliant cars are more likely to be owned by poorer drivers, but I'd guess this is still a very small number of possible labour voters.
There are some recent stats that suggest cycling had now overtaken driving in parts of central London, so like with all Pigou taxes, ULEZ will become a smaller issue going forward.
Virtually none of the 46% of households without access to a car are changing their vote because of ULEZ.
A lot of the households with non compliant cars are both incentived to turn out and switch.
As with VAT on private schools it makes no difference electorally that the majority support the policy, the switchers are nearly all on one side.
The gap between Khan and Bailey last time was 120,000 votes - a lot more than that will be impacted by ULEZ. If Corbyn joins the show it feels pretty tough for Khan to me. One quirk is that if Corbyn does join, it might prompt other high profile independents as not impossible the winning number could be in the mid twenties.
I reckon we'd have two Corbyns on the ballot for starters.
If Jezza delivered Susan Hall (who has the potential to become the worst mayor ever elected in a major city) to London I suspect outside of his diehard fans who don't care (and never have) about winning elections, he will lose all sympathy and it'll be a bullet to the brain of Labour's hard left for a generation.
How would a Khan v Corbyn v Hall v Johnson work out......
Boris as an independent as well? That would be amusing, and an easy win for Khan.
I think Boris might squeek that one. I am assuming floors for Corbyn at 15%, and Boris 20%. Think Hall would be about 5%, 10% tops. It is possible either Khan or Corbyn can dominate each other during the campaign and one becomes the clear choice, but think it more likely that the Labour vote is split far more heavily than the Tory one.
Amusing to see the right try to latch on to one issue after another (BLM, 'cancel culture', gender/trans, ULEZ...) in an attempt to find something to sway the polls. None of these things have worked; none will.
This is a very good tip by @MikeSmithson by the way.
Sadiq has made a huge error with ulez. However, I suspect it will blow over and that he will be re-elected.
It ought to serve as a warning to Labour. It's during their third term in office that they will combine arrogance with fatigue.
History repeats itself. Has to. No one listens.
If you apply the Uxbridge swing to the London Mayoral contest, then Khan wins by the biggest margin in any London Mayoral contest.
That’s the point. ULEZ may have allowed the Tories to hold on in Uxbridge, but there was still a substantial swing against them. The underlying unpopularity of the Conservatives is the bigger factor. Lay Hall.
Or perhaps ULEZ was the reason for the massive swing 😉
I don't know much about London politics, but in a city where 46% of households don't have access to a car at all, I can't see how this can become an issue for Khan without a hysterical misinformation campaign from CCHQ. 90% of those cars are ULEZ compliant, so we are talking about less than 5% of households.
Car ownership is also strongly correlated with earnings and location. The people with cars are already likely to be voting Tory. You might find that non-ULEZ compliant cars are more likely to be owned by poorer drivers, but I'd guess this is still a very small number of possible labour voters.
There are some recent stats that suggest cycling had now overtaken driving in parts of central London, so like with all Pigou taxes, ULEZ will become a smaller issue going forward.
Virtually none of the 46% of households without access to a car are changing their vote because of ULEZ.
A lot of the households with non compliant cars are both incentived to turn out and switch.
As with VAT on private schools it makes no difference electorally that the majority support the policy, the switchers are nearly all on one side.
The gap between Khan and Bailey last time was 120,000 votes - a lot more than that will be impacted by ULEZ. If Corbyn joins the show it feels pretty tough for Khan to me. One quirk is that if Corbyn does join, it might prompt other high profile independents as not impossible the winning number could be in the mid twenties.
I reckon we'd have two Corbyns on the ballot for starters.
If Jezza delivered Susan Hall (who has the potential to become the worst mayor ever elected in a major city) to London I suspect outside of his diehard fans who don't care (and never have) about winning elections, he will lose all sympathy and it'll be a bullet to the brain of Labour's hard left for a generation.
You do however have to admire the sheer chutzpah of the Tories for pinning the blame for a controversial policy that they themselves have mandated on their political opponents.
It's like the Greens coming up with the 'dementia tax' label when their own funding plans were about four times as punitive.
Of course Khan's bungling response has been helpful to them but it's almost brilliant in its sheer ruthlessness.
An interesting argument. But I don't see the Conservatives winning unless:two things happen:
- they pick a popular celebrity candidate, of the kind that has such huge advantage in direct elections like this; and - they recover significantly in national politics.
Boris won narrowly in 2008 when he had good name recognition and Labour were hugely unpopular nationally and in 2012, he was the incumbent, which gives a big advantage in being known.
So good luck to OGH but I'm not sure I'd take 7/1 for Susan Who?
Agreed. The other thing would be needing a popular celebrity candidate who isn’t labelable as a party hack.
None of the Mayors of London so far have primarily been identified by their party affiliation, in the public eye. Khan is the closest to a standard party candidate, but most people don’t regard him as Mr Labour.
Khan is a figure of ridicule. ULEZ has given him a bloody nose because he tried to force it through. It won't be forgotten however much Labour apologise.
No. ULEZ policy is good. The implementation sucks, a bit.
Turing this into culture wars bullshit is so Donald Fucking Trump.
1) London needs cleaner air 2) Historically, the best way to achieve this is incrementally improving standards. As proven many times in many places 3) The “ULEZ policy”that was implemented was just one of a number of possible policies. 4) Not being impressed with 3) doesn’t mean opposing 1 & 2.
What makes me laugh about the Tory attempt to create ULEZ as a culture war issue is that it's their policy. Implemented by Boris for inner London, imposed on the suburbs by Grant Shapps. Where the "it will tax motorists" attack is literally what Shapps demanded as part of the TfL bailouts.
If the Tories want to oppose their own policy that's fine. But claiming - as some have - that this is "typical socialism" is painfully deluded. Perhaps Michael Green is a socialist?
Good morning
Looks as if wood burning stoves are environmentally unacceptable and a ban is looking for them
I think I read you are installing one
I'm not a fan of wood-burning stoves, and I think it's daft when people build a new energy efficient house and then install one (though the oak from old whisky barrels does burn in interesting ways) but I'd only ban them in urban areas. In remote rural areas such as RP's neck of the woods, where the population density is low, a ban would be excessive.
An interesting argument. But I don't see the Conservatives winning unless:two things happen:
- they pick a popular celebrity candidate, of the kind that has such huge advantage in direct elections like this; and - they recover significantly in national politics.
Boris won narrowly in 2008 when he had good name recognition and Labour were hugely unpopular nationally and in 2012, he was the incumbent, which gives a big advantage in being known.
So good luck to OGH but I'm not sure I'd take 7/1 for Susan Who?
Agreed. The other thing would be needing a popular celebrity candidate who isn’t labelable as a party hack.
None of the Mayors of London so far have primarily been identified by their party affiliation, in the public eye. Khan is the closest to a standard party candidate, but most people don’t regard him as Mr Labour.
Khan is a figure of ridicule. ULEZ has given him a bloody nose because he tried to force it through. It won't be forgotten however much Labour apologise.
No. ULEZ policy is good. The implementation sucks, a bit.
Turing this into culture wars bullshit is so Donald Fucking Trump.
1) London needs cleaner air 2) Historically, the best way to achieve this is incrementally improving standards. As proven many times in many places 3) The “ULEZ policy”that was implemented was just one of a number of possible policies. 4) Not being impressed with 3) doesn’t mean opposing 1 & 2.
What makes me laugh about the Tory attempt to create ULEZ as a culture war issue is that it's their policy. Implemented by Boris for inner London, imposed on the suburbs by Grant Shapps. Where the "it will tax motorists" attack is literally what Shapps demanded as part of the TfL bailouts.
If the Tories want to oppose their own policy that's fine. But claiming - as some have - that this is "typical socialism" is painfully deluded. Perhaps Michael Green is a socialist?
Good morning
Looks as if wood burning stoves are environmentally unacceptable and a ban is looking for them
I think I read you are installing one
We have a woodturning stove. Put it in 13 years ago in good faith, believing it was greener than using fossil fuels (it is).
But the particulates issue has emerged since then. We would not put one in now, nor will we when we move house next year (hopefully).
Aside from the environmental considerations they have some pros (a real fire is a nice to look at) but are also quite a lot of work and create a lot of dust.
However, something's come up so I can't go. The two tickets are transferable but non-refundable. Would anyone like them? A contribution to the cost would be nice but I'll give them away rather than just toss them in the bin. Let me know by email to nickmp1@aol.com.
This is a very good tip by @MikeSmithson by the way.
Sadiq has made a huge error with ulez. However, I suspect it will blow over and that he will be re-elected.
It ought to serve as a warning to Labour. It's during their third term in office that they will combine arrogance with fatigue.
History repeats itself. Has to. No one listens.
If you apply the Uxbridge swing to the London Mayoral contest, then Khan wins by the biggest margin in any London Mayoral contest.
That’s the point. ULEZ may have allowed the Tories to hold on in Uxbridge, but there was still a substantial swing against them. The underlying unpopularity of the Conservatives is the bigger factor. Lay Hall.
Or perhaps ULEZ was the reason for the massive swing 😉
I don't know much about London politics, but in a city where 46% of households don't have access to a car at all, I can't see how this can become an issue for Khan without a hysterical misinformation campaign from CCHQ. 90% of those cars are ULEZ compliant, so we are talking about less than 5% of households.
Car ownership is also strongly correlated with earnings and location. The people with cars are already likely to be voting Tory. You might find that non-ULEZ compliant cars are more likely to be owned by poorer drivers, but I'd guess this is still a very small number of possible labour voters.
There are some recent stats that suggest cycling had now overtaken driving in parts of central London, so like with all Pigou taxes, ULEZ will become a smaller issue going forward.
Virtually none of the 46% of households without access to a car are changing their vote because of ULEZ.
A lot of the households with non compliant cars are both incentived to turn out and switch.
As with VAT on private schools it makes no difference electorally that the majority support the policy, the switchers are nearly all on one side.
The gap between Khan and Bailey last time was 120,000 votes - a lot more than that will be impacted by ULEZ. If Corbyn joins the show it feels pretty tough for Khan to me. One quirk is that if Corbyn does join, it might prompt other high profile independents as not impossible the winning number could be in the mid twenties.
I reckon we'd have two Corbyns on the ballot for starters.
If Jezza delivered Susan Hall (who has the potential to become the worst mayor ever elected in a major city) to London I suspect outside of his diehard fans who don't care (and never have) about winning elections, he will lose all sympathy and it'll be a bullet to the brain of Labour's hard left for a generation.
Hall might do something about crime and make London more low tax and business friendly and actually listen to the suburbs
And Nick Gibb might one day understand basic assessment processes.
An interesting argument. But I don't see the Conservatives winning unless:two things happen:
- they pick a popular celebrity candidate, of the kind that has such huge advantage in direct elections like this; and - they recover significantly in national politics.
Boris won narrowly in 2008 when he had good name recognition and Labour were hugely unpopular nationally and in 2012, he was the incumbent, which gives a big advantage in being known.
So good luck to OGH but I'm not sure I'd take 7/1 for Susan Who?
Agreed. The other thing would be needing a popular celebrity candidate who isn’t labelable as a party hack.
None of the Mayors of London so far have primarily been identified by their party affiliation, in the public eye. Khan is the closest to a standard party candidate, but most people don’t regard him as Mr Labour.
Khan is a figure of ridicule. ULEZ has given him a bloody nose because he tried to force it through. It won't be forgotten however much Labour apologise.
No. ULEZ policy is good. The implementation sucks, a bit.
Turing this into culture wars bullshit is so Donald Fucking Trump.
1) London needs cleaner air 2) Historically, the best way to achieve this is incrementally improving standards. As proven many times in many places 3) The “ULEZ policy”that was implemented was just one of a number of possible policies. 4) Not being impressed with 3) doesn’t mean opposing 1 & 2.
What makes me laugh about the Tory attempt to create ULEZ as a culture war issue is that it's their policy. Implemented by Boris for inner London, imposed on the suburbs by Grant Shapps. Where the "it will tax motorists" attack is literally what Shapps demanded as part of the TfL bailouts.
If the Tories want to oppose their own policy that's fine. But claiming - as some have - that this is "typical socialism" is painfully deluded. Perhaps Michael Green is a socialist?
Good morning
Looks as if wood burning stoves are environmentally unacceptable and a ban is looking for them
I think I read you are installing one
I'm not a fan of wood-burning stoves, and I think it's daft when people build a new energy efficient house and then install one (though the oak from old whisky barrels does burn in interesting ways) but I'd only ban them in urban areas. In remote rural areas such as RP's neck of the woods, where the population density is low, a ban would be excessive.
Reintroduce Edward I ban on burning coal in London. Complete with death penalty.
That will make everyone happy.
Because if you dislike an environmental policy you are shitscum.
This is a very good tip by @MikeSmithson by the way.
Sadiq has made a huge error with ulez. However, I suspect it will blow over and that he will be re-elected.
It ought to serve as a warning to Labour. It's during their third term in office that they will combine arrogance with fatigue.
History repeats itself. Has to. No one listens.
If you apply the Uxbridge swing to the London Mayoral contest, then Khan wins by the biggest margin in any London Mayoral contest.
That’s the point. ULEZ may have allowed the Tories to hold on in Uxbridge, but there was still a substantial swing against them. The underlying unpopularity of the Conservatives is the bigger factor. Lay Hall.
Or perhaps ULEZ was the reason for the massive swing 😉
I don't know much about London politics, but in a city where 46% of households don't have access to a car at all, I can't see how this can become an issue for Khan without a hysterical misinformation campaign from CCHQ. 90% of those cars are ULEZ compliant, so we are talking about less than 5% of households.
Car ownership is also strongly correlated with earnings and location. The people with cars are already likely to be voting Tory. You might find that non-ULEZ compliant cars are more likely to be owned by poorer drivers, but I'd guess this is still a very small number of possible labour voters.
There are some recent stats that suggest cycling had now overtaken driving in parts of central London, so like with all Pigou taxes, ULEZ will become a smaller issue going forward.
Outer London is different. In many suburbs, car usage isn’t optional. In addition, the assumption is that the next stage of ULEZ is coming. So it’s far more than the immediately effected drivers.
The overall car taxation in London, on parking, congestion charge etc. is nothing if you can afford an EV. Otherwise you pay.
Poorer drivers in outer London suburbs are not paying the congestion charge. I live inside the South Circular and work in central London, and I have never in my life paid the congestion charge.
That’s because it has priced people out of driving into the centre. Unless you are in an EV. In which case, you roll in and park at a charging point.
That's the whole point of the congestion charge. It's the reason why there isn't permanent gridlock in central London. Pigouvian taxes like the congestion charge are a smart way to deal with externalities, of which vehicle congestion is a prime example. It's not a right vs left issue. It's a smart vs dumb issue. If the Tories want to make Pigouvian taxes a wedge issue it is just another example of their stupidity and intellectual bankruptcy.
I'd much rather a suite of Pigou taxes to higher income taxes. Don't mind people getting rich as long as they aren't harming other people.
Good news from Spain that Vox fell sharply backwards. They ran a campaign offering all kinds of reactionary policies, literally implored people to vote for them on their posters, and lost ground rapidly.
The best PSOE result in terms of vote share since 2007 and a major polling failure. Only one pollster had them getting over 30% and that was the widely derided CIS, which has always been accused of being biased to the left.
A humiliation for Vox and a personal disaster for PP leader Feijóo, who is going to struggle to retain control of a party that expected the process of forming a government to have begun today but has now learned that just being anti-Sánchez was not enough.
Now, we’re almost certainly heading for new elections in November or December, with Sánchez likely to be caretaker PM in the meantime. There is a narrow path to him forming a new government, if everything falls his way - but that is highly unlikely as its Catalan separatists, who also had a terrible night, that will decide.
Notable that despite the summer polling date turnout rose from 66% to 70%. The progressive Spain turned out to keep Vox out of power. There’s a lesson there for PP. But will they learn it? They are a party much like the 2019 Tories - one with a split personality, that took votes from former C’s and Vox supporters, from the centre and the far right. How do you keep such a coalition together if being anti-Sánchez is not enough?
Agree mostly. I suspect Feijoo will not survive. There is talk of Juanma Moreno, the Andalucian President who did get an absolute majority here and who remains a popular centrist. The mainstream parties both improved but not quite close enough for PP. The left have their problems too, only getting the barest of majorities if the right wing JUNTS back them in return for..what? Autumn elections do seem likely.
The UK equivalent of what has happened in Spain would be Tories most seats but no majority and SNP balance of power demanding an independence referendum to enable a government to be formed and legislation passed.
Even here that might lead to a Labour Tory grand coalition, certainly if further elections proved inconclusive and Madrid is even more anti Catalan separatism than London is anti SNP
FPTP helps both Hall and Corbyn, assuming he runs as an Independent, either of whom could win on just over a third of the vote.
Indeed it is possible Khan could come third with no preference votes now
There are definitely places where the new rules make a difference - Beford was one, I suspect Cambridgeshire will be another.
But London? The second votes have never flipped the results before. There's a window for Hall, sure. It's a 2-3 horse race, and she is one of the horses, so to speak. But she needs several unlikely things (Corbyn splitting the left, national swing from now, ULEZ expansion to become unpopular more widely) to all happen.
An interesting argument. But I don't see the Conservatives winning unless:two things happen:
- they pick a popular celebrity candidate, of the kind that has such huge advantage in direct elections like this; and - they recover significantly in national politics.
Boris won narrowly in 2008 when he had good name recognition and Labour were hugely unpopular nationally and in 2012, he was the incumbent, which gives a big advantage in being known.
So good luck to OGH but I'm not sure I'd take 7/1 for Susan Who?
Agreed. The other thing would be needing a popular celebrity candidate who isn’t labelable as a party hack.
None of the Mayors of London so far have primarily been identified by their party affiliation, in the public eye. Khan is the closest to a standard party candidate, but most people don’t regard him as Mr Labour.
Khan is a figure of ridicule. ULEZ has given him a bloody nose because he tried to force it through. It won't be forgotten however much Labour apologise.
No. ULEZ policy is good. The implementation sucks, a bit.
Turing this into culture wars bullshit is so Donald Fucking Trump.
1) London needs cleaner air 2) Historically, the best way to achieve this is incrementally improving standards. As proven many times in many places 3) The “ULEZ policy”that was implemented was just one of a number of possible policies. 4) Not being impressed with 3) doesn’t mean opposing 1 & 2.
What makes me laugh about the Tory attempt to create ULEZ as a culture war issue is that it's their policy. Implemented by Boris for inner London, imposed on the suburbs by Grant Shapps. Where the "it will tax motorists" attack is literally what Shapps demanded as part of the TfL bailouts.
If the Tories want to oppose their own policy that's fine. But claiming - as some have - that this is "typical socialism" is painfully deluded. Perhaps Michael Green is a socialist?
Good morning
Looks as if wood burning stoves are environmentally unacceptable and a ban is looking for them
I think I read you are installing one
I'm not a fan of wood-burning stoves, and I think it's daft when people build a new energy efficient house and then install one (though the oak from old whisky barrels does burn in interesting ways) but I'd only ban them in urban areas. In remote rural areas such as RP's neck of the woods, where the population density is low, a ban would be excessive.
Reintroduce Edward I ban on burning coal in London. Complete with death penalty.
That will make everyone happy.
Because if you dislike an environmental policy you are shitscum.
I believe it was national and that Nottingham was the initial problem
FPTP helps both Hall and Corbyn, assuming he runs as an Independent, either of whom could win on just over a third of the vote.
Indeed it is possible Khan could come third with no preference votes now
There are definitely places where the new rules make a difference - Beford was one, I suspect Cambridgeshire will be another.
But London? The second votes have never flipped the results before. There's a window for Hall, sure. It's a 2-3 horse race, and she is one of the horses, so to speak. But she needs several unlikely things (Corbyn splitting the left, national swing from now, ULEZ expansion to become unpopular more widely) to all happen.
I agree, but there may be a factor that Mayoral elections are regarded by many as not very important, and an opportunity for a frivolous vote, perhaps sending a signal of one kind or another. Khan is too serious for that sort of attitude, while colourful independents have a better shot than usual.
FPTP helps both Hall and Corbyn, assuming he runs as an Independent, either of whom could win on just over a third of the vote.
Indeed it is possible Khan could come third with no preference votes now
There are definitely places where the new rules make a difference - Beford was one, I suspect Cambridgeshire will be another.
But London? The second votes have never flipped the results before. There's a window for Hall, sure. It's a 2-3 horse race, and she is one of the horses, so to speak. But she needs several unlikely things (Corbyn splitting the left, national swing from now, ULEZ expansion to become unpopular more widely) to all happen.
I agree, but there may be a factor that Mayoral elections are regarded by many as not very important, and an opportunity for a frivolous vote, perhaps sending a signal of one kind or another. Khan is too serious for that sort of attitude, while colourful independents have a better shot than usual.
Also when the economy is bad and there are no good answers, obviously this hurts the incumbaments. Nationally that is the Tories, but in London, especially the Mayoral election, for most it will still be the Tories they want to protest about. For others it will be anti Khan as the incumbant and that is a different dynamic to the national situation. London will swing far less to Labour than the rest of the country for several reasons.
FPTP helps both Hall and Corbyn, assuming he runs as an Independent, either of whom could win on just over a third of the vote.
Indeed it is possible Khan could come third with no preference votes now
There are definitely places where the new rules make a difference - Beford was one, I suspect Cambridgeshire will be another.
But London? The second votes have never flipped the results before. There's a window for Hall, sure. It's a 2-3 horse race, and she is one of the horses, so to speak. But she needs several unlikely things (Corbyn splitting the left, national swing from now, ULEZ expansion to become unpopular more widely) to all happen.
I agree, but there may be a factor that Mayoral elections are regarded by many as not very important, and an opportunity for a frivolous vote, perhaps sending a signal of one kind or another. Khan is too serious for that sort of attitude, while colourful independents have a better shot than usual.
Count Binface's manifesto is starting to look positively sensible.
A tracking system, as used in several countries. Box in the car.
Charging is proportional to vehicle size, distance travelled. Given it is registered to a specific owner/vehicle, exemptions and reductions for poorer people becomes easy.
Since it has GPS, easy to enforce speed limits. So get rid of the expensive to maintain road humps that penalise small cars. And cause accidents - they are often placed very badly, causing drivers to swerve left and right to get the lowest bump.
FPTP helps both Hall and Corbyn, assuming he runs as an Independent, either of whom could win on just over a third of the vote.
Indeed it is possible Khan could come third with no preference votes now
There are definitely places where the new rules make a difference - Beford was one, I suspect Cambridgeshire will be another.
But London? The second votes have never flipped the results before. There's a window for Hall, sure. It's a 2-3 horse race, and she is one of the horses, so to speak. But she needs several unlikely things (Corbyn splitting the left, national swing from now, ULEZ expansion to become unpopular more widely) to all happen.
I agree, but there may be a factor that Mayoral elections are regarded by many as not very important, and an opportunity for a frivolous vote, perhaps sending a signal of one kind or another. Khan is too serious for that sort of attitude, while colourful independents have a better shot than usual.
Also when the economy is bad and there are no good answers, obviously this hurts the incumbaments. Nationally that is the Tories, but in London, especially the Mayoral election, for most it will still be the Tories they want to protest about. For others it will be anti Khan as the incumbant and that is a different dynamic to the national situation. London will swing far less to Labour than the rest of the country for several reasons.
But it'll still swing to Labour. That's why this sudden media about turn - that the Tories are on the march and Starmer is in crisis because the country is rising up against the ULEZ - is so mad. Uxbridge and South Ruislip, a historically always Tory constituency full of car owners voting at the peak of the pre-expansion ULEZ controversy, in a by-election where local issues always come to the fore, almost delivered a Labour gain for the first time ever on a 6.7% swing. On the same day the Tories suffered swings in excess of 20% in two other constituencies.
But in British press land that equals crisis for Starmer and the road to salvation for Sunak. And more than that, now it seems to mean the Conservatives on course for a triumphant London mayoral election victory.
Thread time on why the thing we need to be most worried about in politics in the the coming years are not older, Trump voters but rather the young Republicans staffers that openly like and retweet videos with literal nazi imagery in it and how online spaces created them 1/ https://twitter.com/mike_senters/status/1683290262431232008
FPTP helps both Hall and Corbyn, assuming he runs as an Independent, either of whom could win on just over a third of the vote.
Indeed it is possible Khan could come third with no preference votes now
There are definitely places where the new rules make a difference - Beford was one, I suspect Cambridgeshire will be another.
But London? The second votes have never flipped the results before. There's a window for Hall, sure. It's a 2-3 horse race, and she is one of the horses, so to speak. But she needs several unlikely things (Corbyn splitting the left, national swing from now, ULEZ expansion to become unpopular more widely) to all happen.
I agree, but there may be a factor that Mayoral elections are regarded by many as not very important, and an opportunity for a frivolous vote, perhaps sending a signal of one kind or another. Khan is too serious for that sort of attitude, while colourful independents have a better shot than usual.
Also when the economy is bad and there are no good answers, obviously this hurts the incumbaments. Nationally that is the Tories, but in London, especially the Mayoral election, for most it will still be the Tories they want to protest about. For others it will be anti Khan as the incumbant and that is a different dynamic to the national situation. London will swing far less to Labour than the rest of the country for several reasons.
But it'll still swing to Labour. That's why this sudden media about turn - that the Tories are on the march and Starmer is in crisis because the country is rising up against the ULEZ - is so mad. Uxbridge and South Ruislip, a historically always Tory constituency full of car owners voting at the peak of the pre-expansion ULEZ controversy, in a by-election where local issues always come to the fore, almost delivered a Labour gain for the first time ever on a 6.7% swing. On the same day the Tories suffered swings in excess of 20% in two other constituencies.
But in British press land that equals crisis for Starmer and the road to salvation for Sunak. And more than that, now it seems to mean the Conservatives on course for a triumphant London mayoral election victory.
The other point to add is that London has swung more to Labour in the last few elections than the country as a whole, stacking up worthless votes in seats like mine where the incumbent has a 30,000 majority. So some unwinding of this is potentially very electorally efficient for Labour.
FPTP helps both Hall and Corbyn, assuming he runs as an Independent, either of whom could win on just over a third of the vote.
Indeed it is possible Khan could come third with no preference votes now
There are definitely places where the new rules make a difference - Beford was one, I suspect Cambridgeshire will be another.
But London? The second votes have never flipped the results before. There's a window for Hall, sure. It's a 2-3 horse race, and she is one of the horses, so to speak. But she needs several unlikely things (Corbyn splitting the left, national swing from now, ULEZ expansion to become unpopular more widely) to all happen.
I agree, but there may be a factor that Mayoral elections are regarded by many as not very important, and an opportunity for a frivolous vote, perhaps sending a signal of one kind or another. Khan is too serious for that sort of attitude, while colourful independents have a better shot than usual.
Also when the economy is bad and there are no good answers, obviously this hurts the incumbaments. Nationally that is the Tories, but in London, especially the Mayoral election, for most it will still be the Tories they want to protest about. For others it will be anti Khan as the incumbant and that is a different dynamic to the national situation. London will swing far less to Labour than the rest of the country for several reasons.
But it'll still swing to Labour. That's why this sudden media about turn - that the Tories are on the march and Starmer is in crisis because the country is rising up against the ULEZ - is so mad. Uxbridge and South Ruislip, a historically always Tory constituency full of car owners voting at the peak of the pre-expansion ULEZ controversy, in a by-election where local issues always come to the fore, almost delivered a Labour gain for the first time ever on a 6.7% swing. On the same day the Tories suffered swings in excess of 20% in two other constituencies.
But in British press land that equals crisis for Starmer and the road to salvation for Sunak. And more than that, now it seems to mean the Conservatives on course for a triumphant London mayoral election victory.
Think you are projecting there. I don't see much signs of a crisis for Starmer or reports of that. The results were probably good enough to keep Sunak in post til the GE, which was likely anyway.
If perception was that the Tories are on course for a London mayoral victory then they would be odds on not 15-20% shots. Probably half of that 15-20% comes from the Corbyn possibly, so they are considered big outsiders still.
The debate is whether the Tories are at the 20% or just above, or the 15% and below ends of the market, not that they are somehow on course for victory.
Thread time on why the thing we need to be most worried about in politics in the the coming years are not older, Trump voters but rather the young Republicans staffers that openly like and retweet videos with literal nazi imagery in it and how online spaces created them 1/ https://twitter.com/mike_senters/status/1683290262431232008
Watching the DeSantis and Trump staffers go after each other all day on Twitter, is to go down a very weird rabbit hole indeed. Both candidates need to get a serious grip on those working for them, both officially and unofficially.
An interesting argument. But I don't see the Conservatives winning unless:two things happen:
- they pick a popular celebrity candidate, of the kind that has such huge advantage in direct elections like this; and - they recover significantly in national politics.
Boris won narrowly in 2008 when he had good name recognition and Labour were hugely unpopular nationally and in 2012, he was the incumbent, which gives a big advantage in being known.
So good luck to OGH but I'm not sure I'd take 7/1 for Susan Who?
Agreed. The other thing would be needing a popular celebrity candidate who isn’t labelable as a party hack.
None of the Mayors of London so far have primarily been identified by their party affiliation, in the public eye. Khan is the closest to a standard party candidate, but most people don’t regard him as Mr Labour.
Khan is a figure of ridicule. ULEZ has given him a bloody nose because he tried to force it through. It won't be forgotten however much Labour apologise.
No. ULEZ policy is good. The implementation sucks, a bit.
Turing this into culture wars bullshit is so Donald Fucking Trump.
1) London needs cleaner air 2) Historically, the best way to achieve this is incrementally improving standards. As proven many times in many places 3) The “ULEZ policy”that was implemented was just one of a number of possible policies. 4) Not being impressed with 3) doesn’t mean opposing 1 & 2.
What makes me laugh about the Tory attempt to create ULEZ as a culture war issue is that it's their policy. Implemented by Boris for inner London, imposed on the suburbs by Grant Shapps. Where the "it will tax motorists" attack is literally what Shapps demanded as part of the TfL bailouts.
If the Tories want to oppose their own policy that's fine. But claiming - as some have - that this is "typical socialism" is painfully deluded. Perhaps Michael Green is a socialist?
Good morning
Looks as if wood burning stoves are environmentally unacceptable and a ban is looking for them
I think I read you are installing one
I'm not a fan of wood-burning stoves, and I think it's daft when people build a new energy efficient house and then install one (though the oak from old whisky barrels does burn in interesting ways) but I'd only ban them in urban areas. In remote rural areas such as RP's neck of the woods, where the population density is low, a ban would be excessive.
Where I am there is no gas. Oil is out. So without our stove we'd freeze. We also use it to cook on - ideal for soups and casseroles. UFH is expensive. We have insulated like mad and have solar panels for both electricity and hot water. The electricity supply is not always reliable during storms either.
It has been raining hard here for most of the last week but when it stops the weather is lovely. The dog is looking forward to a very long walk indeed.
On topic, I don't agree and wonder whether Mike is being overly-influenced by the result in Bedford. In reality, London voters were already pre-distributing their Con/Lab preference despite the SV system - the combined Con/Lab first-preference share in 2021 (with two pretty weak candidates) was 75%; their parties' regional-vote share in the simultaneous Assembly election was 69%. At the 2016 election (Khan-Goldsmith), the Lab+Con vote was 10% higher for the mayoral; in 2012 (Johnson-Livingstone II) it was 11% higher.
Without a strong third-party candidate from the centre/left, the switch in systems is unlikely to make all that much difference, not least because London would be very much a Labour city even if there were parity between the two main parties, which isn't the case by a long way.
Granted, mayoral elections can turn on personalities and policies much more than general elections but for the Tories to take London they need a candidate with the charisma, personality and ability to reach across to Labour / LD / Green voters. Susan Hall - a fairly bog-standard politician - is not that person.
Consequently, Khan will win comfortably because he has a red rosette on, despite his record and, given the experience in Uxbridge, a currently-superior Tory election machine in London.
Good news from Spain that Vox fell sharply backwards. They ran a campaign offering all kinds of reactionary policies, literally implored people to vote for them on their posters, and lost ground rapidly.
The best PSOE result in terms of vote share since 2007 and a major polling failure. Only one pollster had them getting over 30% and that was the widely derided CIS, which has always been accused of being biased to the left.
A humiliation for Vox and a personal disaster for PP leader Feijóo, who is going to struggle to retain control of a party that expected the process of forming a government to have begun today but has now learned that just being anti-Sánchez was not enough.
Now, we’re almost certainly heading for new elections in November or December, with Sánchez likely to be caretaker PM in the meantime. There is a narrow path to him forming a new government, if everything falls his way - but that is highly unlikely as its Catalan separatists, who also had a terrible night, that will decide.
Notable that despite the summer polling date turnout rose from 66% to 70%. The progressive Spain turned out to keep Vox out of power. There’s a lesson there for PP. But will they learn it? They are a party much like the 2019 Tories - one with a split personality, that took votes from former C’s and Vox supporters, from the centre and the far right. How do you keep such a coalition together if being anti-Sánchez is not enough?
Agree mostly. I suspect Feijoo will not survive. There is talk of Juanma Moreno, the Andalucian President who did get an absolute majority here and who remains a popular centrist. The mainstream parties both improved but not quite close enough for PP. The left have their problems too, only getting the barest of majorities if the right wing JUNTS back them in return for..what? Autumn elections do seem likely.
The UK equivalent of what has happened in Spain would be Tories most seats but no majority and SNP balance of power demanding an independence referendum to enable a government to be formed and legislation passed.
Even here that might lead to a Labour Tory grand coalition, certainly if further elections proved inconclusive and Madrid is even more anti Catalan separatism than London is anti SNP
The subject of election permutations for 2024 is going to fill some space. if a grand alliance was possible, then post 2016 Brexit time was the opportunity. That it didn't happen then at a time its lack seriously damaged the country, is shameful, but tells us it isn't happening in 2024.
The first calculation is this I think. How many seats, net, at a minimum do the Tories need to lose to Lab/LD/SNP/Green/PC to cease being able to run the country (from the 2019 365 base). 50? - giving them 315?
On topic, I don't agree and wonder whether Mike is being overly-influenced by the result in Bedford. In reality, London voters were already pre-distributing their Con/Lab preference despite the SV system - the combined Con/Lab first-preference share in 2021 (with two pretty weak candidates) was 75%; their parties' regional-vote share in the simultaneous Assembly election was 69%. At the 2016 election (Khan-Goldsmith), the Lab+Con vote was 10% higher for the mayoral; in 2012 (Johnson-Livingstone II) it was 11% higher.
Without a strong third-party candidate from the centre/left, the switch in systems is unlikely to make all that much difference, not least because London would be very much a Labour city even if there were parity between the two main parties, which isn't the case by a long way.
Granted, mayoral elections can turn on personalities and policies much more than general elections but for the Tories to take London they need a candidate with the charisma, personality and ability to reach across to Labour / LD / Green voters. Susan Hall - a fairly bog-standard politician - is not that person.
Consequently, Khan will win comfortably because he has a red rosette on, despite his record and, given the experience in Uxbridge, a currently-superior Tory election machine in London.
At what point does the Met need to be given the RUC treatment? It’s clear that the recent change of leadership has made little difference, and there are still weekly stories of sex offenders from the force.
“The best time to plant a tree was 30 years ago. The second best time is now.”
The fact that so many stories are coming out about bad cops is inevitable when you start to clean up. You have to grit your teeth and learn to live with the bad publicity. It is a sign that you are starting to clean up. If in a year or two this is still happening then you are in trouble.
More worrying is the default instinct of wanting to cover up, not wanting transparency etc.,. And the fact that the Met still won't accept that it has an institutional problem, whether with corruption or misogyny. That suggests a high level of denial and resistance.
On topic, I don't agree and wonder whether Mike is being overly-influenced by the result in Bedford. In reality, London voters were already pre-distributing their Con/Lab preference despite the SV system - the combined Con/Lab first-preference share in 2021 (with two pretty weak candidates) was 75%; their parties' regional-vote share in the simultaneous Assembly election was 69%. At the 2016 election (Khan-Goldsmith), the Lab+Con vote was 10% higher for the mayoral; in 2012 (Johnson-Livingstone II) it was 11% higher.
Without a strong third-party candidate from the centre/left, the switch in systems is unlikely to make all that much difference, not least because London would be very much a Labour city even if there were parity between the two main parties, which isn't the case by a long way.
Granted, mayoral elections can turn on personalities and policies much more than general elections but for the Tories to take London they need a candidate with the charisma, personality and ability to reach across to Labour / LD / Green voters. Susan Hall - a fairly bog-standard politician - is not that person.
Consequently, Khan will win comfortably because he has a red rosette on, despite his record and, given the experience in Uxbridge, a currently-superior Tory election machine in London.
I wouldn't be backing Hall south of 20/1.
I think that's about right.
Yes. There are mayoral areas where the split is something like C40 L30 LD30 and SV makes a difference.
Greater London is some way from being one of those places.
This is a very good tip by @MikeSmithson by the way.
Sadiq has made a huge error with ulez. However, I suspect it will blow over and that he will be re-elected.
It ought to serve as a warning to Labour. It's during their third term in office that they will combine arrogance with fatigue.
History repeats itself. Has to. No one listens.
If you apply the Uxbridge swing to the London Mayoral contest, then Khan wins by the biggest margin in any London Mayoral contest.
That’s the point. ULEZ may have allowed the Tories to hold on in Uxbridge, but there was still a substantial swing against them. The underlying unpopularity of the Conservatives is the bigger factor. Lay Hall.
Or perhaps ULEZ was the reason for the massive swing 😉
I don't know much about London politics, but in a city where 46% of households don't have access to a car at all, I can't see how this can become an issue for Khan without a hysterical misinformation campaign from CCHQ. 90% of those cars are ULEZ compliant, so we are talking about less than 5% of households.
Car ownership is also strongly correlated with earnings and location. The people with cars are already likely to be voting Tory. You might find that non-ULEZ compliant cars are more likely to be owned by poorer drivers, but I'd guess this is still a very small number of possible labour voters.
There are some recent stats that suggest cycling had now overtaken driving in parts of central London, so like with all Pigou taxes, ULEZ will become a smaller issue going forward.
Virtually none of the 46% of households without access to a car are changing their vote because of ULEZ.
A lot of the households with non compliant cars are both incentived to turn out and switch.
As with VAT on private schools it makes no difference electorally that the majority support the policy, the switchers are nearly all on one side.
The gap between Khan and Bailey last time was 120,000 votes - a lot more than that will be impacted by ULEZ. If Corbyn joins the show it feels pretty tough for Khan to me. One quirk is that if Corbyn does join, it might prompt other high profile independents as not impossible the winning number could be in the mid twenties.
I reckon we'd have two Corbyns on the ballot for starters.
If Jezza delivered Susan Hall (who has the potential to become the worst mayor ever elected in a major city) to London I suspect outside of his diehard fans who don't care (and never have) about winning elections, he will lose all sympathy and it'll be a bullet to the brain of Labour's hard left for a generation.
Complete bollocks.
Every Corbyn supporter cared about winning.
It's centrists within Labour who didn't care about winning see the Forde report for evidence of the factional movement of resources at GE2107 away from the winnable marginals to centrist favourites seats with huge majorities.
An interesting argument. But I don't see the Conservatives winning unless:two things happen:
- they pick a popular celebrity candidate, of the kind that has such huge advantage in direct elections like this; and - they recover significantly in national politics.
Boris won narrowly in 2008 when he had good name recognition and Labour were hugely unpopular nationally and in 2012, he was the incumbent, which gives a big advantage in being known.
So good luck to OGH but I'm not sure I'd take 7/1 for Susan Who?
Agreed. The other thing would be needing a popular celebrity candidate who isn’t labelable as a party hack.
None of the Mayors of London so far have primarily been identified by their party affiliation, in the public eye. Khan is the closest to a standard party candidate, but most people don’t regard him as Mr Labour.
Khan is a figure of ridicule. ULEZ has given him a bloody nose because he tried to force it through. It won't be forgotten however much Labour apologise.
No. ULEZ policy is good. The implementation sucks, a bit.
Turing this into culture wars bullshit is so Donald Fucking Trump.
1) London needs cleaner air 2) Historically, the best way to achieve this is incrementally improving standards. As proven many times in many places 3) The “ULEZ policy”that was implemented was just one of a number of possible policies. 4) Not being impressed with 3) doesn’t mean opposing 1 & 2.
What makes me laugh about the Tory attempt to create ULEZ as a culture war issue is that it's their policy. Implemented by Boris for inner London, imposed on the suburbs by Grant Shapps. Where the "it will tax motorists" attack is literally what Shapps demanded as part of the TfL bailouts.
If the Tories want to oppose their own policy that's fine. But claiming - as some have - that this is "typical socialism" is painfully deluded. Perhaps Michael Green is a socialist?
Good morning
Looks as if wood burning stoves are environmentally unacceptable and a ban is looking for them
I think I read you are installing one
We have a woodturning stove. Put it in 13 years ago in good faith, believing it was greener than using fossil fuels (it is).
But the particulates issue has emerged since then. We would not put one in now, nor will we when we move house next year (hopefully).
Aside from the environmental considerations they have some pros (a real fire is a nice to look at) but are also quite a lot of work and create a lot of dust.
As with ULEZ there is a bit of an optics problem, regardless of facts. Wood burning is as ancient as the hills, a naturally occurring phenomenon and returns to the air only the CO2 that it removed in the first place - which is why recently it was commended as the big way forward - part of the 'biomass' revolution.
But more particularly PB wood burners (good people all) will look at thousands of square miles of wood burning forest fires which can be clearly seen from outer space and are all over the world, and wonder in what way their little pile of carefully curated logs is going to make things worse.
Much like ULEZ paying diesel van driving voters of Uxbridge/Hillingdon might look up at the sky as hundreds of planes land in their back garden at Heathrow.
Anyone who thinks there are not millions of votes in this and related issues is delusional.
I'm not sure if this is just some cognitive bias, but it does seem more common round Cambridgeshire than elsewhere - I remember first reading about this in the brilliant book Stuart, A Life Backwards (in which case it was homeless people who had essentially been captured and enslaved).
I guess it is probably happening under our noses in a lot of places though. McDonalds ought to be much more alive to this sort of thing - though I recall years and years ago when I worked at McD's (in Bradford) it was full of all manner of ropey practices (e.g. changing the clocks in staff room by a few minutes then docking an hours pay for being late back to the kitchen; having to take your 'lunch' at the start of your shift etc. - I didn't stay there for long!). Of course, they're all franchises which isn't an excuse but does make things harder.
At what point does the Met need to be given the RUC treatment? It’s clear that the recent change of leadership has made little difference, and there are still weekly stories of sex offenders from the force.
“The best time to plant a tree was 30 years ago. The second best time is now.”
The fact that so many stories are coming out about bad cops is inevitable when you start to clean up. You have to grit your teeth and learn to live with the bad publicity. It is a sign that you are starting to clean up. If in a year or two this is still happening then you are in trouble.
More worrying is the default instinct of wanting to cover up, not wanting transparency etc.,. And the fact that the Met still won't accept that it has an institutional problem, whether with corruption or misogyny. That suggests a high level of denial and resistance.
Cover-ups are what we do best. 2 current stories - ambulances
This is a very good tip by @MikeSmithson by the way.
Sadiq has made a huge error with ulez. However, I suspect it will blow over and that he will be re-elected.
It ought to serve as a warning to Labour. It's during their third term in office that they will combine arrogance with fatigue.
History repeats itself. Has to. No one listens.
If you apply the Uxbridge swing to the London Mayoral contest, then Khan wins by the biggest margin in any London Mayoral contest.
That’s the point. ULEZ may have allowed the Tories to hold on in Uxbridge, but there was still a substantial swing against them. The underlying unpopularity of the Conservatives is the bigger factor. Lay Hall.
Or perhaps ULEZ was the reason for the massive swing 😉
I don't know much about London politics, but in a city where 46% of households don't have access to a car at all, I can't see how this can become an issue for Khan without a hysterical misinformation campaign from CCHQ. 90% of those cars are ULEZ compliant, so we are talking about less than 5% of households.
Car ownership is also strongly correlated with earnings and location. The people with cars are already likely to be voting Tory. You might find that non-ULEZ compliant cars are more likely to be owned by poorer drivers, but I'd guess this is still a very small number of possible labour voters.
There are some recent stats that suggest cycling had now overtaken driving in parts of central London, so like with all Pigou taxes, ULEZ will become a smaller issue going forward.
Virtually none of the 46% of households without access to a car are changing their vote because of ULEZ.
A lot of the households with non compliant cars are both incentived to turn out and switch.
As with VAT on private schools it makes no difference electorally that the majority support the policy, the switchers are nearly all on one side.
The gap between Khan and Bailey last time was 120,000 votes - a lot more than that will be impacted by ULEZ. If Corbyn joins the show it feels pretty tough for Khan to me. One quirk is that if Corbyn does join, it might prompt other high profile independents as not impossible the winning number could be in the mid twenties.
I reckon we'd have two Corbyns on the ballot for starters.
If Jezza delivered Susan Hall (who has the potential to become the worst mayor ever elected in a major city) to London I suspect outside of his diehard fans who don't care (and never have) about winning elections, he will lose all sympathy and it'll be a bullet to the brain of Labour's hard left for a generation.
Complete bollocks.
Every Corbyn supporter cared about winning.
It's centrists within Labour who didn't care about winning see the Forde report for evidence of the factional movement of resources at GE2107 away from the winnable marginals to centrist favourites seats with huge majorities.
Doesn't really explain why Momentum were canvassing for the Tories in my seat to keep the Lib Dems out (N.B. LD's taking seats off the Tories *helps Labour*) but sure.
When I say his diehard fans, that's what I mean. Not the Labour left in general.
Hunter Mahan @HunterMahan The crowd this year is so opposite of all the experience’s I’ve had at @TheOpen . Any ideas why??
Crowds this summer seem to be more common, oiks at Lord's also booed Australia's team and at Wimbledon Djokovic had some boos
Come, come my Essex friend! The worst abuse of the Aussies at Lords was in the Long Room. Members only.
Grey and rather overcast here this morning. Not like summer at all!
Summer has just given up it seems. This July is a classic of the genre: the slow, inexorable descent from really rather usable weather to utter shit. Not a sudden flip but a gradual deterioration. Today, a Monday too, just Old-Traffordesque in its shittiness.
Good news from Spain that Vox fell sharply backwards. They ran a campaign offering all kinds of reactionary policies, literally implored people to vote for them on their posters, and lost ground rapidly.
The best PSOE result in terms of vote share since 2007 and a major polling failure. Only one pollster had them getting over 30% and that was the widely derided CIS, which has always been accused of being biased to the left.
A humiliation for Vox and a personal disaster for PP leader Feijóo, who is going to struggle to retain control of a party that expected the process of forming a government to have begun today but has now learned that just being anti-Sánchez was not enough.
Now, we’re almost certainly heading for new elections in November or December, with Sánchez likely to be caretaker PM in the meantime. There is a narrow path to him forming a new government, if everything falls his way - but that is highly unlikely as its Catalan separatists, who also had a terrible night, that will decide.
Notable that despite the summer polling date turnout rose from 66% to 70%. The progressive Spain turned out to keep Vox out of power. There’s a lesson there for PP. But will they learn it? They are a party much like the 2019 Tories - one with a split personality, that took votes from former C’s and Vox supporters, from the centre and the far right. How do you keep such a coalition together if being anti-Sánchez is not enough?
Agree mostly. I suspect Feijoo will not survive. There is talk of Juanma Moreno, the Andalucian President who did get an absolute majority here and who remains a popular centrist. The mainstream parties both improved but not quite close enough for PP. The left have their problems too, only getting the barest of majorities if the right wing JUNTS back them in return for..what? Autumn elections do seem likely.
The UK equivalent of what has happened in Spain would be Tories most seats but no majority and SNP balance of power demanding an independence referendum to enable a government to be formed and legislation passed.
Even here that might lead to a Labour Tory grand coalition, certainly if further elections proved inconclusive and Madrid is even more anti Catalan separatism than London is anti SNP
The subject of election permutations for 2024 is going to fill some space. if a grand alliance was possible, then post 2016 Brexit time was the opportunity. That it didn't happen then at a time its lack seriously damaged the country, is shameful, but tells us it isn't happening in 2024.
The first calculation is this I think. How many seats, net, at a minimum do the Tories need to lose to Lab/LD/SNP/Green/PC to cease being able to run the country (from the 2019 365 base). 50? - giving them 315?
I find it hard to see Sunak leaving Number 10 if he has more MPs than Labour, in the absence of a formal deal of some sort that gives Starmer a majority.
Such a formal deal seems unlikely, for a variety of reasons, so a second election in the event of a Hung Parliament would seem to be highly likely.
Good news from Spain that Vox fell sharply backwards. They ran a campaign offering all kinds of reactionary policies, literally implored people to vote for them on their posters, and lost ground rapidly.
The best PSOE result in terms of vote share since 2007 and a major polling failure. Only one pollster had them getting over 30% and that was the widely derided CIS, which has always been accused of being biased to the left.
A humiliation for Vox and a personal disaster for PP leader Feijóo, who is going to struggle to retain control of a party that expected the process of forming a government to have begun today but has now learned that just being anti-Sánchez was not enough.
Now, we’re almost certainly heading for new elections in November or December, with Sánchez likely to be caretaker PM in the meantime. There is a narrow path to him forming a new government, if everything falls his way - but that is highly unlikely as its Catalan separatists, who also had a terrible night, that will decide.
Notable that despite the summer polling date turnout rose from 66% to 70%. The progressive Spain turned out to keep Vox out of power. There’s a lesson there for PP. But will they learn it? They are a party much like the 2019 Tories - one with a split personality, that took votes from former C’s and Vox supporters, from the centre and the far right. How do you keep such a coalition together if being anti-Sánchez is not enough?
Agree mostly. I suspect Feijoo will not survive. There is talk of Juanma Moreno, the Andalucian President who did get an absolute majority here and who remains a popular centrist. The mainstream parties both improved but not quite close enough for PP. The left have their problems too, only getting the barest of majorities if the right wing JUNTS back them in return for..what? Autumn elections do seem likely.
The UK equivalent of what has happened in Spain would be Tories most seats but no majority and SNP balance of power demanding an independence referendum to enable a government to be formed and legislation passed.
Even here that might lead to a Labour Tory grand coalition, certainly if further elections proved inconclusive and Madrid is even more anti Catalan separatism than London is anti SNP
The subject of election permutations for 2024 is going to fill some space. if a grand alliance was possible, then post 2016 Brexit time was the opportunity. That it didn't happen then at a time its lack seriously damaged the country, is shameful, but tells us it isn't happening in 2024.
The first calculation is this I think. How many seats, net, at a minimum do the Tories need to lose to Lab/LD/SNP/Green/PC to cease being able to run the country (from the 2019 365 base). 50? - giving them 315?
In the unlikely but plausible scenario that the SNP are effectively king-makers but won't actively back Labour into office without a referendum guarantee, then - assuming Starmer isn't willing to concede on (he might do so given current SNP difficulties, particularly if it was on specific proposals, not an in-principle vote) - Labour takes office as a minority government.
The simple fact is that the SNP will never vote to keep the Tories in office so even if Sunak tried to hang on to power, he wouldn't be able to. Labour would table a VoNC and all the opposition parties, with the possible but not guaranteed exception of the DUP, would support it. The SNP cannot do otherwise without jeopardising their already flaky SNP-Lab swing voters - and without them, they're back to being a second-tier party in Scotland.
But that then places the SNP in a position of having to choose between Labour and a new election. Given their financial position, plus the likely public reaction to their being responsible for yet another vote (see Brenda from Bristol), combined with their leverage on a vote-by-vote basis in Westminster in that scenario, a Lab or Lab-LD minority govt becomes the most likely outcome, unless Labour themselves want an immediate second election.
However, timing matters here. Assume the election is mid-Nov 2024. No-one will want an election crossing Xmas/New Year, which gives a minimum of 2 months (more likely 4 months if the depths of winter is to be avoided) before the next practical window.
Foreign Office minister Andrew Mitchell sounding shaky on the future of the 2030 petrol car ban: ‘All I can tell you is that it’s in place… I can’t prophesy the future’
Postponing the 2030 ban on new ICE cars is a bit like inflation, out of the control of government. If the manufacturers no longer make ICE cars we can no longer buy them. Unless in its lurch back to the 1950s the Government could reintroduce the half timbered Morris Minor alongside hanging.
Why would the manufacturers stop making ICE vehicles when the USA likely isn't going to bother with a hard stop and the last I heard about the EU it is looking at 2035 for an implementation ? The only reason to stop making otherwise european spec vehicles with right hand drive would be as a direct result of UK gov't edicts.
We could harmonise our automotive safety with the USA rather than Europe I suppose. But my point still stands. There will be a very limited choice when most manufacturers have already earmarked late this decade for an all electric line up. A road full of F350 trucks would be carnage
A man with a sense of irony !
Users of UK roads kill proportionally more vulnerable users than the average of our European peers, especially pedestrians.
Yet US roads kill pedestrians at more than 4x the UK rate per pop. ~8500 in 2022, which is 80% up on the 2009 minimum (population increase ~10%).
If our rate harmonised with the US, UK pedestrians killed on our roads would rise from 376 in 2022 to 1580. Quite stark.
Lower safety standards of the 'light truck' class are part of the reason.
I think I remarked yesterday that we need to get the US on board with emissions / energy consumption reductions, moving way beyond the Biden bodge.
At what point does the Met need to be given the RUC treatment? It’s clear that the recent change of leadership has made little difference, and there are still weekly stories of sex offenders from the force.
“The best time to plant a tree was 30 years ago. The second best time is now.”
The fact that so many stories are coming out about bad cops is inevitable when you start to clean up. You have to grit your teeth and learn to live with the bad publicity. It is a sign that you are starting to clean up. If in a year or two this is still happening then you are in trouble.
More worrying is the default instinct of wanting to cover up, not wanting transparency etc.,. And the fact that the Met still won't accept that it has an institutional problem, whether with corruption or misogyny. That suggests a high level of denial and resistance.
While you're here, and on a different matter, I was wondering if Labour's policy on trans rights, referred to by LP in an earlier post and outlined today by Dodds in The Guardian, would satisfy you (and JKR)? It does seem to include a clear sex/gender distinction, and protection of single-sex spaces.
This is a very good tip by @MikeSmithson by the way.
Sadiq has made a huge error with ulez. However, I suspect it will blow over and that he will be re-elected.
It ought to serve as a warning to Labour. It's during their third term in office that they will combine arrogance with fatigue.
History repeats itself. Has to. No one listens.
If you apply the Uxbridge swing to the London Mayoral contest, then Khan wins by the biggest margin in any London Mayoral contest.
That’s the point. ULEZ may have allowed the Tories to hold on in Uxbridge, but there was still a substantial swing against them. The underlying unpopularity of the Conservatives is the bigger factor. Lay Hall.
Or perhaps ULEZ was the reason for the massive swing 😉
I don't know much about London politics, but in a city where 46% of households don't have access to a car at all, I can't see how this can become an issue for Khan without a hysterical misinformation campaign from CCHQ. 90% of those cars are ULEZ compliant, so we are talking about less than 5% of households.
Car ownership is also strongly correlated with earnings and location. The people with cars are already likely to be voting Tory. You might find that non-ULEZ compliant cars are more likely to be owned by poorer drivers, but I'd guess this is still a very small number of possible labour voters.
There are some recent stats that suggest cycling had now overtaken driving in parts of central London, so like with all Pigou taxes, ULEZ will become a smaller issue going forward.
Virtually none of the 46% of households without access to a car are changing their vote because of ULEZ.
A lot of the households with non compliant cars are both incentived to turn out and switch.
As with VAT on private schools it makes no difference electorally that the majority support the policy, the switchers are nearly all on one side.
The gap between Khan and Bailey last time was 120,000 votes - a lot more than that will be impacted by ULEZ. If Corbyn joins the show it feels pretty tough for Khan to me. One quirk is that if Corbyn does join, it might prompt other high profile independents as not impossible the winning number could be in the mid twenties.
I reckon we'd have two Corbyns on the ballot for starters.
If Jezza delivered Susan Hall (who has the potential to become the worst mayor ever elected in a major city) to London I suspect outside of his diehard fans who don't care (and never have) about winning elections, he will lose all sympathy and it'll be a bullet to the brain of Labour's hard left for a generation.
Complete bollocks.
Every Corbyn supporter cared about winning.
It's centrists within Labour who didn't care about winning see the Forde report for evidence of the factional movement of resources at GE2107 away from the winnable marginals to centrist favourites seats with huge majorities.
I am inviting offers for this excellent bridge. Only one owner, not perhaps the most careful, but I wondered if you might be interested?
A tracking system, as used in several countries. Box in the car.
Charging is proportional to vehicle size, distance travelled. Given it is registered to a specific owner/vehicle, exemptions and reductions for poorer people becomes easy.
Since it has GPS, easy to enforce speed limits. So get rid of the expensive to maintain road humps that penalise small cars. And cause accidents - they are often placed very badly, causing drivers to swerve left and right to get the lowest bump.
I would imagine there would be quite a few civil liberties concerns about that.
This is a very good tip by @MikeSmithson by the way.
Sadiq has made a huge error with ulez. However, I suspect it will blow over and that he will be re-elected.
It ought to serve as a warning to Labour. It's during their third term in office that they will combine arrogance with fatigue.
History repeats itself. Has to. No one listens.
If you apply the Uxbridge swing to the London Mayoral contest, then Khan wins by the biggest margin in any London Mayoral contest.
That’s the point. ULEZ may have allowed the Tories to hold on in Uxbridge, but there was still a substantial swing against them. The underlying unpopularity of the Conservatives is the bigger factor. Lay Hall.
Or perhaps ULEZ was the reason for the massive swing 😉
I don't know much about London politics, but in a city where 46% of households don't have access to a car at all, I can't see how this can become an issue for Khan without a hysterical misinformation campaign from CCHQ. 90% of those cars are ULEZ compliant, so we are talking about less than 5% of households.
Car ownership is also strongly correlated with earnings and location. The people with cars are already likely to be voting Tory. You might find that non-ULEZ compliant cars are more likely to be owned by poorer drivers, but I'd guess this is still a very small number of possible labour voters.
There are some recent stats that suggest cycling had now overtaken driving in parts of central London, so like with all Pigou taxes, ULEZ will become a smaller issue going forward.
As sure as night follows day the pro ULEZ lobbyists are doing the rounds of the news studios expanding on the virtue of ULEZ and leading the fightback.
Apparently Angela Rayner was saying, was misquoted as saying, ULEZ is coming everywhere. An interesting point of debate for the next election looms.
I expect this to be the precursor of charging per mile as we move away from fuel duty on petrol.
Pro-ULEZ lobbyists !
Rayner is right in part though - ULEZ is coming in some places, though nothing like everywhere. In those places where NOx concentrations are much higher than acceptable - according to Government targets.
Labour need to hang any negatives around the neck of the Government that imposed the targets,
This is a very good tip by @MikeSmithson by the way.
Sadiq has made a huge error with ulez. However, I suspect it will blow over and that he will be re-elected.
It ought to serve as a warning to Labour. It's during their third term in office that they will combine arrogance with fatigue.
History repeats itself. Has to. No one listens.
If you apply the Uxbridge swing to the London Mayoral contest, then Khan wins by the biggest margin in any London Mayoral contest.
That’s the point. ULEZ may have allowed the Tories to hold on in Uxbridge, but there was still a substantial swing against them. The underlying unpopularity of the Conservatives is the bigger factor. Lay Hall.
Or perhaps ULEZ was the reason for the massive swing 😉
I don't know much about London politics, but in a city where 46% of households don't have access to a car at all, I can't see how this can become an issue for Khan without a hysterical misinformation campaign from CCHQ. 90% of those cars are ULEZ compliant, so we are talking about less than 5% of households.
Car ownership is also strongly correlated with earnings and location. The people with cars are already likely to be voting Tory. You might find that non-ULEZ compliant cars are more likely to be owned by poorer drivers, but I'd guess this is still a very small number of possible labour voters.
There are some recent stats that suggest cycling had now overtaken driving in parts of central London, so like with all Pigou taxes, ULEZ will become a smaller issue going forward.
Virtually none of the 46% of households without access to a car are changing their vote because of ULEZ.
A lot of the households with non compliant cars are both incentived to turn out and switch.
As with VAT on private schools it makes no difference electorally that the majority support the policy, the switchers are nearly all on one side.
The gap between Khan and Bailey last time was 120,000 votes - a lot more than that will be impacted by ULEZ. If Corbyn joins the show it feels pretty tough for Khan to me. One quirk is that if Corbyn does join, it might prompt other high profile independents as not impossible the winning number could be in the mid twenties.
I reckon we'd have two Corbyns on the ballot for starters.
If Jezza delivered Susan Hall (who has the potential to become the worst mayor ever elected in a major city) to London I suspect outside of his diehard fans who don't care (and never have) about winning elections, he will lose all sympathy and it'll be a bullet to the brain of Labour's hard left for a generation.
Complete bollocks.
Every Corbyn supporter cared about winning.
It's centrists within Labour who didn't care about winning see the Forde report for evidence of the factional movement of resources at GE2107 away from the winnable marginals to centrist favourites seats with huge majorities.
I am inviting offers for this excellent bridge. Only one owner, not perhaps the most careful, but I wondered if you might be interested?
Would he be interested in some nice land, right next to the bridge?
This is a very good tip by @MikeSmithson by the way.
Sadiq has made a huge error with ulez. However, I suspect it will blow over and that he will be re-elected.
It ought to serve as a warning to Labour. It's during their third term in office that they will combine arrogance with fatigue.
History repeats itself. Has to. No one listens.
If you apply the Uxbridge swing to the London Mayoral contest, then Khan wins by the biggest margin in any London Mayoral contest.
That’s the point. ULEZ may have allowed the Tories to hold on in Uxbridge, but there was still a substantial swing against them. The underlying unpopularity of the Conservatives is the bigger factor. Lay Hall.
Or perhaps ULEZ was the reason for the massive swing 😉
I don't know much about London politics, but in a city where 46% of households don't have access to a car at all, I can't see how this can become an issue for Khan without a hysterical misinformation campaign from CCHQ. 90% of those cars are ULEZ compliant, so we are talking about less than 5% of households.
Car ownership is also strongly correlated with earnings and location. The people with cars are already likely to be voting Tory. You might find that non-ULEZ compliant cars are more likely to be owned by poorer drivers, but I'd guess this is still a very small number of possible labour voters.
There are some recent stats that suggest cycling had now overtaken driving in parts of central London, so like with all Pigou taxes, ULEZ will become a smaller issue going forward.
Virtually none of the 46% of households without access to a car are changing their vote because of ULEZ.
A lot of the households with non compliant cars are both incentived to turn out and switch.
As with VAT on private schools it makes no difference electorally that the majority support the policy, the switchers are nearly all on one side.
The gap between Khan and Bailey last time was 120,000 votes - a lot more than that will be impacted by ULEZ. If Corbyn joins the show it feels pretty tough for Khan to me. One quirk is that if Corbyn does join, it might prompt other high profile independents as not impossible the winning number could be in the mid twenties.
I reckon we'd have two Corbyns on the ballot for starters.
If Jezza delivered Susan Hall (who has the potential to become the worst mayor ever elected in a major city) to London I suspect outside of his diehard fans who don't care (and never have) about winning elections, he will lose all sympathy and it'll be a bullet to the brain of Labour's hard left for a generation.
Complete bollocks.
Every Corbyn supporter cared about winning.
It's centrists within Labour who didn't care about winning see the Forde report for evidence of the factional movement of resources at GE2107 away from the winnable marginals to centrist favourites seats with huge majorities.
For the record, Corbyn is a principled man and I will never forget his unwavering support for the Sri Lankan Tamils, unlike scum like Liam Fox and the t*at from Stockton South (forgot his name) who actively supported the Sri Lankan Government and their genocide of the Tamil people.
However he was a crap leader. Starmar who is also crap is better at leading though he would sell his grandmother to get into power.
A tracking system, as used in several countries. Box in the car.
Charging is proportional to vehicle size, distance travelled. Given it is registered to a specific owner/vehicle, exemptions and reductions for poorer people becomes easy.
Since it has GPS, easy to enforce speed limits. So get rid of the expensive to maintain road humps that penalise small cars. And cause accidents - they are often placed very badly, causing drivers to swerve left and right to get the lowest bump.
I would imagine there would be quite a few civil liberties concerns about that.
You are already being photographed every few hundred yards in much of London, already.
Edit: And the sat nav route planners are selling your travel commercially. Bet the government slurps that as well.
A tracking system, as used in several countries. Box in the car.
Charging is proportional to vehicle size, distance travelled. Given it is registered to a specific owner/vehicle, exemptions and reductions for poorer people becomes easy.
Since it has GPS, easy to enforce speed limits. So get rid of the expensive to maintain road humps that penalise small cars. And cause accidents - they are often placed very badly, causing drivers to swerve left and right to get the lowest bump.
I would imagine there would be quite a few civil liberties concerns about that.
Why? This is the UK. We carry tracking devices in our pocket. Insurance companies offer discounts to put monitoring devices in the boot.
A tracking system, as used in several countries. Box in the car.
Charging is proportional to vehicle size, distance travelled. Given it is registered to a specific owner/vehicle, exemptions and reductions for poorer people becomes easy.
Since it has GPS, easy to enforce speed limits. So get rid of the expensive to maintain road humps that penalise small cars. And cause accidents - they are often placed very badly, causing drivers to swerve left and right to get the lowest bump.
If you want to price use according to car size and distance travelled, perhaps with additional cost for urban use -
A tracking system, as used in several countries. Box in the car.
Charging is proportional to vehicle size, distance travelled. Given it is registered to a specific owner/vehicle, exemptions and reductions for poorer people becomes easy.
Since it has GPS, easy to enforce speed limits. So get rid of the expensive to maintain road humps that penalise small cars. And cause accidents - they are often placed very badly, causing drivers to swerve left and right to get the lowest bump.
I would imagine there would be quite a few civil liberties concerns about that.
You are already being photographed every few hundred yards in much of London, already.
Edit: And the sat nav route planners are selling your travel commercially. Bet the government slurps that as well.
Yes. Hence why I always try and look my best when I go out. You never know who might take a look at that footage. Could be someone scouting for late middle-aged talent.
A tracking system, as used in several countries. Box in the car.
Charging is proportional to vehicle size, distance travelled. Given it is registered to a specific owner/vehicle, exemptions and reductions for poorer people becomes easy.
Since it has GPS, easy to enforce speed limits. So get rid of the expensive to maintain road humps that penalise small cars. And cause accidents - they are often placed very badly, causing drivers to swerve left and right to get the lowest bump.
If you want to price use according to car size and distance travelled, perhaps with additional cost for urban use -
why not just tax fuel more?
Emissions vary quite widely among cars with equal mpg.
Also location of the travel is important for congestion.
Good news from Spain that Vox fell sharply backwards. They ran a campaign offering all kinds of reactionary policies, literally implored people to vote for them on their posters, and lost ground rapidly.
The best PSOE result in terms of vote share since 2007 and a major polling failure. Only one pollster had them getting over 30% and that was the widely derided CIS, which has always been accused of being biased to the left.
A humiliation for Vox and a personal disaster for PP leader Feijóo, who is going to struggle to retain control of a party that expected the process of forming a government to have begun today but has now learned that just being anti-Sánchez was not enough.
Now, we’re almost certainly heading for new elections in November or December, with Sánchez likely to be caretaker PM in the meantime. There is a narrow path to him forming a new government, if everything falls his way - but that is highly unlikely as its Catalan separatists, who also had a terrible night, that will decide.
Notable that despite the summer polling date turnout rose from 66% to 70%. The progressive Spain turned out to keep Vox out of power. There’s a lesson there for PP. But will they learn it? They are a party much like the 2019 Tories - one with a split personality, that took votes from former C’s and Vox supporters, from the centre and the far right. How do you keep such a coalition together if being anti-Sánchez is not enough?
Agree mostly. I suspect Feijoo will not survive. There is talk of Juanma Moreno, the Andalucian President who did get an absolute majority here and who remains a popular centrist. The mainstream parties both improved but not quite close enough for PP. The left have their problems too, only getting the barest of majorities if the right wing JUNTS back them in return for..what? Autumn elections do seem likely.
The UK equivalent of what has happened in Spain would be Tories most seats but no majority and SNP balance of power demanding an independence referendum to enable a government to be formed and legislation passed.
Even here that might lead to a Labour Tory grand coalition, certainly if further elections proved inconclusive and Madrid is even more anti Catalan separatism than London is anti SNP
The subject of election permutations for 2024 is going to fill some space. if a grand alliance was possible, then post 2016 Brexit time was the opportunity. That it didn't happen then at a time its lack seriously damaged the country, is shameful, but tells us it isn't happening in 2024.
The first calculation is this I think. How many seats, net, at a minimum do the Tories need to lose to Lab/LD/SNP/Green/PC to cease being able to run the country (from the 2019 365 base). 50? - giving them 315?
In the unlikely but plausible scenario that the SNP are effectively king-makers but won't actively back Labour into office without a referendum guarantee, then - assuming Starmer isn't willing to concede on (he might do so given current SNP difficulties, particularly if it was on specific proposals, not an in-principle vote) - Labour takes office as a minority government.
The simple fact is that the SNP will never vote to keep the Tories in office so even if Sunak tried to hang on to power, he wouldn't be able to. Labour would table a VoNC and all the opposition parties, with the possible but not guaranteed exception of the DUP, would support it. The SNP cannot do otherwise without jeopardising their already flaky SNP-Lab swing voters - and without them, they're back to being a second-tier party in Scotland.
But that then places the SNP in a position of having to choose between Labour and a new election. Given their financial position, plus the likely public reaction to their being responsible for yet another vote (see Brenda from Bristol), combined with their leverage on a vote-by-vote basis in Westminster in that scenario, a Lab or Lab-LD minority govt becomes the most likely outcome, unless Labour themselves want an immediate second election.
However, timing matters here. Assume the election is mid-Nov 2024. No-one will want an election crossing Xmas/New Year, which gives a minimum of 2 months (more likely 4 months if the depths of winter is to be avoided) before the next practical window.
Why will no-one want an election crossing Christmas and the New Year? Activists too busy? Fear of backlash from voters being canvassed over the holiday period?
To be cynical, wouldn't those factors mitigate the weaknesses and play to the strengths of a Conservative Party that starts off with fewer activists and a better record of social media campaigning? See you at the polling booths in January 2025.
Good news from Spain that Vox fell sharply backwards. They ran a campaign offering all kinds of reactionary policies, literally implored people to vote for them on their posters, and lost ground rapidly.
The best PSOE result in terms of vote share since 2007 and a major polling failure. Only one pollster had them getting over 30% and that was the widely derided CIS, which has always been accused of being biased to the left.
A humiliation for Vox and a personal disaster for PP leader Feijóo, who is going to struggle to retain control of a party that expected the process of forming a government to have begun today but has now learned that just being anti-Sánchez was not enough.
Now, we’re almost certainly heading for new elections in November or December, with Sánchez likely to be caretaker PM in the meantime. There is a narrow path to him forming a new government, if everything falls his way - but that is highly unlikely as its Catalan separatists, who also had a terrible night, that will decide.
Notable that despite the summer polling date turnout rose from 66% to 70%. The progressive Spain turned out to keep Vox out of power. There’s a lesson there for PP. But will they learn it? They are a party much like the 2019 Tories - one with a split personality, that took votes from former C’s and Vox supporters, from the centre and the far right. How do you keep such a coalition together if being anti-Sánchez is not enough?
Agree mostly. I suspect Feijoo will not survive. There is talk of Juanma Moreno, the Andalucian President who did get an absolute majority here and who remains a popular centrist. The mainstream parties both improved but not quite close enough for PP. The left have their problems too, only getting the barest of majorities if the right wing JUNTS back them in return for..what? Autumn elections do seem likely.
The UK equivalent of what has happened in Spain would be Tories most seats but no majority and SNP balance of power demanding an independence referendum to enable a government to be formed and legislation passed.
Even here that might lead to a Labour Tory grand coalition, certainly if further elections proved inconclusive and Madrid is even more anti Catalan separatism than London is anti SNP
The subject of election permutations for 2024 is going to fill some space. if a grand alliance was possible, then post 2016 Brexit time was the opportunity. That it didn't happen then at a time its lack seriously damaged the country, is shameful, but tells us it isn't happening in 2024.
The first calculation is this I think. How many seats, net, at a minimum do the Tories need to lose to Lab/LD/SNP/Green/PC to cease being able to run the country (from the 2019 365 base). 50? - giving them 315?
In the unlikely but plausible scenario that the SNP are effectively king-makers but won't actively back Labour into office without a referendum guarantee, then - assuming Starmer isn't willing to concede on (he might do so given current SNP difficulties, particularly if it was on specific proposals, not an in-principle vote) - Labour takes office as a minority government.
The simple fact is that the SNP will never vote to keep the Tories in office so even if Sunak tried to hang on to power, he wouldn't be able to. Labour would table a VoNC and all the opposition parties, with the possible but not guaranteed exception of the DUP, would support it. The SNP cannot do otherwise without jeopardising their already flaky SNP-Lab swing voters - and without them, they're back to being a second-tier party in Scotland.
But that then places the SNP in a position of having to choose between Labour and a new election. Given their financial position, plus the likely public reaction to their being responsible for yet another vote (see Brenda from Bristol), combined with their leverage on a vote-by-vote basis in Westminster in that scenario, a Lab or Lab-LD minority govt becomes the most likely outcome, unless Labour themselves want an immediate second election.
However, timing matters here. Assume the election is mid-Nov 2024. No-one will want an election crossing Xmas/New Year, which gives a minimum of 2 months (more likely 4 months if the depths of winter is to be avoided) before the next practical window.
Yes. I think this analysis enforces the view that to lose power for certain the Tories don't need to lose a massive number of seats.
FWIW, betting wise, I think recent events have increased the chance of NOM, but not significantly increased the chance of a Tory led government after the next election.
I think the Tories would privately regard NOM in 2024 as a very good result. Like England if they get to 2-2 after losing the Ashes.
I don't remember the fires in 2007, but it's interesting that that was a washout summer here. I guess the jet stream was doing a similar thing back then.
This is a very good tip by @MikeSmithson by the way.
Sadiq has made a huge error with ulez. However, I suspect it will blow over and that he will be re-elected.
It ought to serve as a warning to Labour. It's during their third term in office that they will combine arrogance with fatigue.
History repeats itself. Has to. No one listens.
If you apply the Uxbridge swing to the London Mayoral contest, then Khan wins by the biggest margin in any London Mayoral contest.
That’s the point. ULEZ may have allowed the Tories to hold on in Uxbridge, but there was still a substantial swing against them. The underlying unpopularity of the Conservatives is the bigger factor. Lay Hall.
Or perhaps ULEZ was the reason for the massive swing 😉
I don't know much about London politics, but in a city where 46% of households don't have access to a car at all, I can't see how this can become an issue for Khan without a hysterical misinformation campaign from CCHQ. 90% of those cars are ULEZ compliant, so we are talking about less than 5% of households.
Car ownership is also strongly correlated with earnings and location. The people with cars are already likely to be voting Tory. You might find that non-ULEZ compliant cars are more likely to be owned by poorer drivers, but I'd guess this is still a very small number of possible labour voters.
There are some recent stats that suggest cycling had now overtaken driving in parts of central London, so like with all Pigou taxes, ULEZ will become a smaller issue going forward.
Virtually none of the 46% of households without access to a car are changing their vote because of ULEZ.
A lot of the households with non compliant cars are both incentived to turn out and switch.
As with VAT on private schools it makes no difference electorally that the majority support the policy, the switchers are nearly all on one side.
The gap between Khan and Bailey last time was 120,000 votes - a lot more than that will be impacted by ULEZ. If Corbyn joins the show it feels pretty tough for Khan to me. One quirk is that if Corbyn does join, it might prompt other high profile independents as not impossible the winning number could be in the mid twenties.
I reckon we'd have two Corbyns on the ballot for starters.
If Jezza delivered Susan Hall (who has the potential to become the worst mayor ever elected in a major city) to London I suspect outside of his diehard fans who don't care (and never have) about winning elections, he will lose all sympathy and it'll be a bullet to the brain of Labour's hard left for a generation.
Complete bollocks.
Every Corbyn supporter cared about winning.
It's centrists within Labour who didn't care about winning see the Forde report for evidence of the factional movement of resources at GE2107 away from the winnable marginals to centrist favourites seats with huge majorities.
Centrists in most of the marginals weren't going to vote for Corbyn even if Labour campaigned there 24/7. As 2019 proved
A tracking system, as used in several countries. Box in the car.
Charging is proportional to vehicle size, distance travelled. Given it is registered to a specific owner/vehicle, exemptions and reductions for poorer people becomes easy.
Since it has GPS, easy to enforce speed limits. So get rid of the expensive to maintain road humps that penalise small cars. And cause accidents - they are often placed very badly, causing drivers to swerve left and right to get the lowest bump.
I would imagine there would be quite a few civil liberties concerns about that.
You are already being photographed every few hundred yards in much of London, already.
Edit: And the sat nav route planners are selling your travel commercially. Bet the government slurps that as well.
Yes. Hence why I always try and look my best when I go out. You never know who might take a look at that footage. Could be someone scouting for late middle-aged talent.
As long as you aren’t guilty of Using The Tube While Brown, you’ll be fine.
If you are a bit sun tanned, the Met may need to shoot you, in the interests of your safety.
An interesting argument. But I don't see the Conservatives winning unless:two things happen:
- they pick a popular celebrity candidate, of the kind that has such huge advantage in direct elections like this; and - they recover significantly in national politics.
Boris won narrowly in 2008 when he had good name recognition and Labour were hugely unpopular nationally and in 2012, he was the incumbent, which gives a big advantage in being known.
So good luck to OGH but I'm not sure I'd take 7/1 for Susan Who?
Agreed. The other thing would be needing a popular celebrity candidate who isn’t labelable as a party hack.
None of the Mayors of London so far have primarily been identified by their party affiliation, in the public eye. Khan is the closest to a standard party candidate, but most people don’t regard him as Mr Labour.
Khan is a figure of ridicule. ULEZ has given him a bloody nose because he tried to force it through. It won't be forgotten however much Labour apologise.
No. ULEZ policy is good. The implementation sucks, a bit.
Turing this into culture wars bullshit is so Donald Fucking Trump.
1) London needs cleaner air 2) Historically, the best way to achieve this is incrementally improving standards. As proven many times in many places 3) The “ULEZ policy”that was implemented was just one of a number of possible policies. 4) Not being impressed with 3) doesn’t mean opposing 1 & 2.
What makes me laugh about the Tory attempt to create ULEZ as a culture war issue is that it's their policy. Implemented by Boris for inner London, imposed on the suburbs by Grant Shapps. Where the "it will tax motorists" attack is literally what Shapps demanded as part of the TfL bailouts.
If the Tories want to oppose their own policy that's fine. But claiming - as some have - that this is "typical socialism" is painfully deluded. Perhaps Michael Green is a socialist?
Good morning
Looks as if wood burning stoves are environmentally unacceptable and a ban is looking for them
I think I read you are installing one
We have a woodturning stove. Put it in 13 years ago in good faith, believing it was greener than using fossil fuels (it is).
But the particulates issue has emerged since then. We would not put one in now, nor will we when we move house next year (hopefully).
Aside from the environmental considerations they have some pros (a real fire is a nice to look at) but are also quite a lot of work and create a lot of dust.
As with ULEZ there is a bit of an optics problem, regardless of facts. Wood burning is as ancient as the hills, a naturally occurring phenomenon and returns to the air only the CO2 that it removed in the first place - which is why recently it was commended as the big way forward - part of the 'biomass' revolution.
But more particularly PB wood burners (good people all) will look at thousands of square miles of wood burning forest fires which can be clearly seen from outer space and are all over the world, and wonder in what way their little pile of carefully curated logs is going to make things worse.
Much like ULEZ paying diesel van driving voters of Uxbridge/Hillingdon might look up at the sky as hundreds of planes land in their back garden at Heathrow.
Anyone who thinks there are not millions of votes in this and related issues is delusional.
I burn wood and I'm not a good person, but I can see the fallacies there. We are responsible for what we do, not for forest fires in faraway countries, and we are relatively more responsible to our literal and moral neighbours than to the world in general.
Having said which I am in the middle of nowhere and would be burning oil otherwise, so no change here. I think any ban will be on new installations, in cities, anyway.
But this is another skirmish in the Man-Ent Wars. Trees have virtually no benefit over low lying vegetation, being just vegetation on stilts. They burn, which we now agree is a bad thing whether intentional or not. We no longer need them to build new ships nor to hold birds and animals to shoot and hunt. The interior of a wood is a gloomy and frightening place, and if you plant beech or softwood, as sterile as a shopping centre. And even if they are the bees knees, they are too late. We don't have a 30 year horizon.
Comments
The only reason to stop making otherwise european spec vehicles with right hand drive would be as a direct result of UK gov't edicts.
Ironically, with the trend to something heavier than 5.56, and mass production by machining from solid being standard, it would actually be a pretty good idea.
I expect for a one-off journey like that we would have simply paid the charge rather than be deterred.
Point being they driving into central London was a foolish thing to contemplate even before the congestion charge that you'd only do if you had a special reason to do so.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ICeXRnU4a-E
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Paved-Paradise-Parking-Explains-World/dp/1984881132/
If Jezza delivered Susan Hall (who has the potential to become the worst mayor ever elected in a major city) to London I suspect outside of his diehard fans who don't care (and never have) about winning elections, he will lose all sympathy and it'll be a bullet to the brain of Labour's hard left for a generation.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jul/24/rishi-sunak-urged-to-go-for-spring-election-by-senior-conservatives
Looks as if wood burning stoves are environmentally unacceptable and a ban is looking for them
I think I read you are installing one
Indeed it is possible Khan could come third with no preference votes now
It's the economy. That's all.
It's like the Greens coming up with the 'dementia tax' label when their own funding plans were about four times as punitive.
Of course Khan's bungling response has been helpful to them but it's almost brilliant in its sheer ruthlessness.
But the particulates issue has emerged since then. We would not put one in now, nor will we when we move house next year (hopefully).
Aside from the environmental considerations they have some pros (a real fire is a nice to look at) but are also quite a lot of work and create a lot of dust.
https://www.secretcinema.com/en_GB/shows/grease?gclid=Cj0KCQjwwvilBhCFARIsADvYi7LbivMJjn9SlyEMHcu9Dr4AD6BOEEOh-3Lcc63nYGgwJLCSik_Fnm0aAszrEALw_wcB
However, something's come up so I can't go. The two tickets are transferable but non-refundable. Would anyone like them? A contribution to the cost would be nice but I'll give them away rather than just toss them in the bin. Let me know by email to nickmp1@aol.com.
But I'm not holding my breath.
https://www.bunkered.co.uk/golf-news/the-open-brian-harman-booed-on-first-tee-in-final-round/
The players like to come here for The Open to get away from the knuckle draggers in New York and Boston. Hunter Mahan found it all a bit confusing...
https://twitter.com/HunterMahan/status/1683238122522578945
Hunter Mahan
@HunterMahan
The crowd this year is so opposite of all the experience’s I’ve had at
@TheOpen
. Any ideas why??
That will make everyone happy.
Because if you dislike an environmental policy you are shitscum.
Even here that might lead to a Labour Tory grand coalition, certainly if further elections proved inconclusive and Madrid is even more anti Catalan separatism than London is anti SNP
But London? The second votes have never flipped the results before. There's a window for Hall, sure. It's a 2-3 horse race, and she is one of the horses, so to speak. But she needs several unlikely things (Corbyn splitting the left, national swing from now, ULEZ expansion to become unpopular more widely) to all happen.
Good job Arsenal fans are setting a better example to the world of sport.
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/manchester-united-arsenal-fans-brawl-27378464
https://www.countbinface.com/london-2021-manifesto
A tracking system, as used in several countries. Box in the car.
Charging is proportional to vehicle size, distance travelled. Given it is registered to a specific owner/vehicle, exemptions and reductions for poorer people becomes easy.
Since it has GPS, easy to enforce speed limits. So get rid of the expensive to maintain road humps that penalise small cars. And cause accidents - they are often placed very badly, causing drivers to swerve left and right to get the lowest bump.
As for soccer in the States, the Simpsons predicted what would happen...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJu2qSJ9zno
But in British press land that equals crisis for Starmer and the road to salvation for Sunak. And more than that, now it seems to mean the Conservatives on course for a triumphant London mayoral election victory.
https://twitter.com/mike_senters/status/1683290262431232008
Has there been some form of alert?
Members only.
Grey and rather overcast here this morning. Not like summer at all!
https://www.flightradar24.com/AMBUSH71/3146c0f1
https://www.flightradar24.com/ID/3146c5bb
https://www.flightradar24.com/ID/3146bf89
If perception was that the Tories are on course for a London mayoral victory then they would be odds on not 15-20% shots. Probably half of that 15-20% comes from the Corbyn possibly, so they are considered big outsiders still.
The debate is whether the Tories are at the 20% or just above, or the 15% and below ends of the market, not that they are somehow on course for victory.
It has been raining hard here for most of the last week but when it stops the weather is lovely. The dog is looking forward to a very long walk indeed.
Without a strong third-party candidate from the centre/left, the switch in systems is unlikely to make all that much difference, not least because London would be very much a Labour city even if there were parity between the two main parties, which isn't the case by a long way.
Granted, mayoral elections can turn on personalities and policies much more than general elections but for the Tories to take London they need a candidate with the charisma, personality and ability to reach across to Labour / LD / Green voters. Susan Hall - a fairly bog-standard politician - is not that person.
Consequently, Khan will win comfortably because he has a red rosette on, despite his record and, given the experience in Uxbridge, a currently-superior Tory election machine in London.
I wouldn't be backing Hall south of 20/1.
The first calculation is this I think. How many seats, net, at a minimum do the Tories need to lose to Lab/LD/SNP/Green/PC to cease being able to run the country (from the 2019 365 base). 50? - giving them 315?
"Pair forced men to work at Caxton Gibbet McDonald's, trial told"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-66250800
More worrying is the default instinct of wanting to cover up, not wanting transparency etc.,. And the fact that the Met still won't accept that it has an institutional problem, whether with corruption or misogyny. That suggests a high level of denial and resistance.
Greater London is some way from being one of those places.
Every Corbyn supporter cared about winning.
It's centrists within Labour who didn't care about winning see the Forde report for evidence of the factional movement of resources at GE2107 away from the winnable marginals to centrist favourites seats with huge majorities.
But more particularly PB wood burners (good people all) will look at thousands of square miles of wood burning forest fires which can be clearly seen from outer space and are all over the world, and wonder in what way their little pile of carefully curated logs is going to make things worse.
Much like ULEZ paying diesel van driving voters of Uxbridge/Hillingdon might look up at the sky as hundreds of planes land in their back garden at Heathrow.
Anyone who thinks there are not millions of votes in this and related issues is delusional.
I guess it is probably happening under our noses in a lot of places though. McDonalds ought to be much more alive to this sort of thing - though I recall years and years ago when I worked at McD's (in Bradford) it was full of all manner of ropey practices (e.g. changing the clocks in staff room by a few minutes then docking an hours pay for being late back to the kitchen; having to take your 'lunch' at the start of your shift etc. - I didn't stay there for long!). Of course, they're all franchises which isn't an excuse but does make things harder.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jul/24/nhs-trust-accused-of-cover-up-is-refusing-to-release-report-into-deaths
Pension funds
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jul/24/mps-launch-inquiry-into-prosecution-of-norton-motorcycles-pension
When I say his diehard fans, that's what I mean. Not the Labour left in general.
Such a formal deal seems unlikely, for a variety of reasons, so a second election in the event of a Hung Parliament would seem to be highly likely.
The simple fact is that the SNP will never vote to keep the Tories in office so even if Sunak tried to hang on to power, he wouldn't be able to. Labour would table a VoNC and all the opposition parties, with the possible but not guaranteed exception of the DUP, would support it. The SNP cannot do otherwise without jeopardising their already flaky SNP-Lab swing voters - and without them, they're back to being a second-tier party in Scotland.
But that then places the SNP in a position of having to choose between Labour and a new election. Given their financial position, plus the likely public reaction to their being responsible for yet another vote (see Brenda from Bristol), combined with their leverage on a vote-by-vote basis in Westminster in that scenario, a Lab or Lab-LD minority govt becomes the most likely outcome, unless Labour themselves want an immediate second election.
However, timing matters here. Assume the election is mid-Nov 2024. No-one will want an election crossing Xmas/New Year, which gives a minimum of 2 months (more likely 4 months if the depths of winter is to be avoided) before the next practical window.
Users of UK roads kill proportionally more vulnerable users than the average of our European peers, especially pedestrians.
Yet US roads kill pedestrians at more than 4x the UK rate per pop. ~8500 in 2022, which is 80% up on the 2009 minimum (population increase ~10%).
If our rate harmonised with the US, UK pedestrians killed on our roads would rise from 376 in 2022 to 1580. Quite stark.
Lower safety standards of the 'light truck' class are part of the reason.
I think I remarked yesterday that we need to get the US on board with emissions / energy consumption reductions, moving way beyond the Biden bodge.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/24/labour-will-lead-on-reform-of-transgender-rights-and-we-wont-take-lectures-from-the-divisive-tories
Not an expert on this stuff by any means so don't rule out Armageddon/End Times.
Mickey Mouse ears look quite fetching on a Yummy Mummy.
Strapped in for take off!
Rayner is right in part though - ULEZ is coming in some places, though nothing like everywhere. In those places where NOx concentrations are much higher than acceptable - according to Government targets.
Labour need to hang any negatives around the neck of the Government that imposed the targets,
Can Starmer achieve that?
Available for viewing twice a day….
However he was a crap leader. Starmar who is also crap is better at leading though he would sell his grandmother to get into power.
Edit: And the sat nav route planners are selling your travel commercially. Bet the government slurps that as well.
why not just tax fuel more?
Also location of the travel is important for congestion.
To be cynical, wouldn't those factors mitigate the weaknesses and play to the strengths of a Conservative Party that starts off with fewer activists and a better record of social media campaigning? See you at the polling booths in January 2025.
FWIW, betting wise, I think recent events have increased the chance of NOM, but not significantly increased the chance of a Tory led government after the next election.
I think the Tories would privately regard NOM in 2024 as a very good result. Like England if they get to 2-2 after losing the Ashes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Greek_forest_fires
I don't remember the fires in 2007, but it's interesting that that was a washout summer here. I guess the jet stream was doing a similar thing back then.
If you are a bit sun tanned, the Met may need to shoot you, in the interests of your safety.
Having said which I am in the middle of nowhere and would be burning oil otherwise, so no change here. I think any ban will be on new installations, in cities, anyway.
But this is another skirmish in the Man-Ent Wars. Trees have virtually no benefit over low lying vegetation, being just vegetation on stilts. They burn, which we now agree is a bad thing whether intentional or not. We no longer need them to build new ships nor to hold birds and animals to shoot and hunt. The interior of a wood is a gloomy and frightening place, and if you plant beech or softwood, as sterile as a shopping centre. And even if they are the bees knees, they are too late. We don't have a 30 year horizon.