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How the LDs are using their by-election victories – politicalbetting.com
How the LDs are using their by-election victories – politicalbetting.com
Ooh… a new style of bar chart… and with Somerton hot off the press… pic.twitter.com/mP5HcJV73u
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You only swing when you're winning.
OGH is always at his very best when analysing the LibDems and they are going to play a significant role in the defenestration of the Conservatives.
IMHO Look to Surrey for some serious scalps.
Their biggest stumbling block is that they have to overcome some seriously large majorities to win a lot of seats from the Conservatives, but as the bar illustrates, they are capable of doing this.
I am going to provisionally estimate that yhey will emerge from the GE with at least 30 seats. They may even displace the SNP as the third largest Party.
As Generals go, Davey is almost as lucky as Starmer.
Clever and an honest bar chart. Are we sure this is the Lib Dems?
Still, I suppose they couldn't really claim Chelsea and Fulham was a "two-horse race" ...
Fair comment and as things stand entirely possible
On the Farage banking affair there are times, when no matter how you dislike someone's political views, when a stand has to be made against an injustice
Yesterday, Nick Thomas Symonds was terrible on Sky attempting to defend Alison Rose and even worse, Rachel Reeves penned a piece (before Rose resigned) accusing Farage and the media of 'bullying' Rose which was just crass in the extreme
Starmer eventually endorsed her resignation, but only after seeing the way the wind was blowing
This was not a political issue, but the difference between trust and confidentiality, and no doubt if it had been anyone other than Farage, these labour politicians would have had a different response
And I would say the same thing if it had been Corbyn who had been subject to this injustice
Awkward as it is to find oneself supporting Farage, it has to be said that he has as much right to privacy as the rest of us.
What possessed this woman to blurt out his private details to a journalist is beyond me.
You meet the same phenomenon with OFSTED inspectors.
The fact that they might actually have quite poor judgement doesn't cross their minds.
Maybe it's a function of their success in climbing the slippery pole - they come to believe in their own brilliance.
Although there is an alternative (political) view.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jul/26/sunak-hunt-uk-natwest-alison-rose
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jul/27/british-gas-record-profit-price-cap-increase
As for Dame Alison Rose, did she breach confidentiality or just pass on water-cooler gossip? The latter seems more likely. She was not involved in Coutts, after all, and it is claimed that what she said wasn't true anyway. Should this over-promoted and overpaid woman have resigned? Of course, but for saying anything at all; for not having the nous to keep her trap shut when speaking to a reporter about a politically-sensitive and newsworthy topic on which she had at best incomplete information.
How many PEPs read pb? Or rather, how many PBers will be identified as PEPs? How many councillors, and lurking MPs? How many punters will be caught up in similar rules for betting? Or savings? Last year it took me three goes to convince a savings trust that it was my own money going into my ISA.
The base issue is politicians creating rules without any consideration of their practicability and consequences, from terrorists with their pavement-fouling dogs, through to this.
Although to be fair he has been particularly deft in his takedown of these particular liberal elitists. These might even be a hatful of compo at the end of this particular rainbow.
In which case, the limiting factor at a General Election is how many catapults, trebuchets and other sink-throwing apparatuses (apparatae?) they possess
None of this is a defence - she made a serious error - but an attempt at explaining how she could have done so
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/07/26/my-war-on-woke-banks-is-just-getting-started/
“ Now it is time to fight back. A common feeling that has been expressed to me over these past few weeks is one of helplessness bordering on despair. It is clear that nobody has been speaking up for everyday people. Now, I intend to be their voice and to campaign for the cultural and legal changes that our banking system needs. Every law-abiding citizen in this country should have the right to a bank account. The resignation of Dame Alison Rose is the first step to ensuring this can happen. Banks must return to operating as they used to do. Then – and only then – can we return to business as usual.
“I am now seriously motivated by this issue. The desperation of those that have been wronged by the big banks means that I simply have to do something. I may not have picked this fight, but I now find myself right in the middle of it. I will be launching, over the course of the next few days, an exercise designed to gather together all of those that have been de-banked. I’m hoping to build a very large database of cases to find out which banks are the worst offenders and what the commonest reasons are, so that we can prepare and present a lobby to ministers, and to Parliament, in order to achieve fundamental change.”
Fair play to him, if he can use his story to bring wider attention to the issue.
You need an army to win a byelection from 25%+ behind. Less so when there's a GE and everyone is looking at politics, especially when the swing needed is less.
\then it’s a question of how many Tory voters actually turn out and vote…
@NickPalmer might be better placed to comment but there seems to have been a growing reluctance on the part of governments (plural) to accept amendments to legislation. I can't quantify this but perhaps there is some politics PhD student counting amendments to bills.
It is clear that nobody has been speaking up for everyday people. Now, I intend to be their voice
Welcome to Farage 3.0. Media darling and thorn in the side of the establishment
2. I am anti-woke.
Therefore
3. The problem with banks is their wokeness.
Anyone spot the logic fail there?
Although three might be the magic number…
Farage caught them out
Rose made a serious error for a banker
This is actually much more important than the number of swans counted on the Thames
As a former stockbroker, millionaire and private bank account holder, I have been battling against the establishment my entire life..."
It is increasingly clear that the Tories are going to fight an insurgent campaign against Keir Starmer's government - the blob, the establishment, the lawyers, the regulators - all the people ruining the lives of the ordinary.
If Farage is there to point out that the Tories ARE the government, it won't work. Especially if he is leading another crusade to motivate all the let behind people to vote against the amassed forces stopping them from succeeding.
There has been an assumption that ReFUK will be an irrelevance. The fall out from the Coutts affair suggests that may not be true.
Ummmm....
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/crane-on-the-case-my-vulnerable-in-laws-got-debanked-by-hsbc/ar-AA1epGGQ?ocid=entnewsntp&cvid=5377dd238d794d1b942c9ec60d0bfe48&ei=14
Fuck business remains the order of the day...
Could I just make it clear that while I need a bank account, I don’t want one with Coutts.
Banking privacy doesn't exist in Britain anymore. She shouldn't have talked to the media but the news will move on.
The days when a leading politician could spend their election expenses on any way they see fit have sadly gone (with acknowledgement to Peter Cook)
If you choose to supply an explanation that’s up to you.
FWIW, I’ve never been asked for an explanation about any banking transfer. But perhaps I live a simpler life than you.
I suspect we will hear a lot of stories about very good people having very bad things done to them by high street banks, and on that front action will need to be taken.
What won't need to happen is Coutts breaking their own financial rules and offering sub-millionaire Farage a bank account. He isn't rich enough, and ultimately that was and remains their legal protection. Because whatever they think about him, their formal reason for pulling the plug was that he fell below £1m. Which their website makes very clear is the bar for membership.
"My private bank wouldn't accept my £900k" doesn't make Farage a man of the people. I expect we will quickly see Coutts dropped as news. I am far more interested in the supposed long list of other banks who also refused him.
Oh Peter Cook, you so nailed it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kyos-M48B8U
Nevertheless: the point remains: we need to understand this basic bank business and how well it works. Benpointer thought from his CAB experience that just about anyone ordinary and poor could get one (which is not the same as having an existing one closed down), but RCS1000's stats suggest otherwise. The logical inference, which may be wrong, is that it is folk with substantial money that they can't explain who are having trouble, or else they are people with houses, etc., who have fallen foul of another bank. I can imagine that one bank's cloising an account could lead to 5-10 mostly unsuccessful applications in a chain reaction.
Every transfer requires one to choose an explanation from a drop-down e.g. 'paying a member friend or family'; 'paying for a product' etc.
It's supposedly for anti-fraud. But if you think anything you do online is private, including banking, then you aren't aware of the all-pervasive privacy invasions.
p.s. had yet another of these yesterday. I was discussing the merits of Wales in verbal conversation with a friend.
Half an hour later, links to Wales appeared on my internet searches.
It's a bit more annoying as the reasons offered do not include 'legacies' which is what I've mostly been paying out in the last month.
Interesting article on the sudden removal of China's foreign minister: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-66321904
- there’s no detectable general outrage about banks acting arbitrarily, certainly not outside the limited world of PEPs.
- Nobody thinks Coutts (if they’ve even heard of it) is woke.
I think for a story like this to really grab the imagination and have a political effect it needs to resonate with a large section of the public - as did partygate, as did Labour antisemitism, Labour vacillation on ULEZ, the Kamikwaze budget and the ongoing sewage debacle.
I agree that the Lords is proving more restless than usual, perhaps because many Lords do reflect the general public view of the Government. The Government's willingness to override amendments isn't new and I'm not sure it's any worse than in the past. Whether they OUGHT to accept more of them in the interest of good government is another question.
Mr F definitely a man of the Tory people. Hence the threat to the "Conservative" Party.
NORTH EAST SOMERSET
YORK OUTER
REIGATE
NORTH SOMERSET
AYLESBURY
RUNNYMEDE AND WEYBRIDGE
BECKENHAM
BROMLEY AND CHISLEHURST
BERWICK-UPON-TWEED
EDDISBURY
HUNTINGDON
HARBOROUGH
CROYDON SOUTH
Would you be happy if a stranger knew your birthday, your children's names, your travel arrangements? The answer, because you plaster it all over social media, is no, not really.
Would you be happy if a stranger knew your bank account details, your payment history, your credit rating? The answer, because you believe these things are important, is yes very much.
To which he responds that the first set of info is extremely difficult to obtain, requiring passwords and invitations; while the second is super easily available to anyone who wants to know.
And that's where the stories of the Aristocrat who (no longer) banks at Coutts and the Aristocrat who cleans our boots (and can't get a basic account) do join up.
We have got a business model of banking where "nah, too difficult/ expensive" is part of the thinking. Branches, customers, services and transactions that aren't easy and quickly profitable are to be trimmed.
Capitalism doesn't have to look like that, but capitalism coupled with short horizons probably does. Fix that, and a lot of the British Disease subsides.
(Talking of which, without being conspiratorial, what's the benefit to society in a hedge fund shorting a bank?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/07/26/paul-marshall-hedge-fund-nets-millions-bet-against-natwest/)
I was about to wade in on transfers between my French and UK bank accounts then realised if just be adding to the general whiff.
Have I got that last bit right?