The Conservatives and Labour will always be the two main parties... until they are not.
Time was when: ...every boy and every gal That’s born into the world alive Is either a little Liberal Or else a little Conservative!
Neither party has a divine right to compete for power; it's not inconceivable that the LDs replace the Tories permanently (until the next change).
The oddness of the current polling is that we keep getting mad predictions of Labour winning everything everywhere. Supposedly that Channel 4 Poll last night had Labour taking Richmond off Sunak.
The electorate have shown they are well up for tactical voting. There is no mass desire for Sunak in the way there was for Blair. But there is a mass demand to get shut of this government. And people showing that they are motivated and well informed about how to vote to bring that about.
If there truly was a Tory collapse, surely there would be scores more LibDems elected rather than Labour winning Richmond. Some Greens too. But in what gets simplified as a two party choice the pollsters interpret national polls nationally instead of looking at reality.
Compare and contrast the LD vote in a seat we're the ABC choice in vs a seat where its Labour. In one seat we pick up a 5 figure majority, In the other seat we lose our deposit. That is what we can expect in the GE - Labour and LD candidates winning outrageous seats whilst their colleagues elsewhere lose their deposit.
Forget UNS.
All sounds entirely sensible, until you remember how poorly the LDs have performed at national elections since 2010.
Which is where Dave'n'George were smarter than the current team.
If Lib and Lab take potshots at each other (2015 due to coalition fallout, 2019 due to the awfulness of Jez 2.0), Conservatives can do well without too much difficulty.
By being so awful, the 2019-now government has made it clear to the red and yellow teams where they should be aiming their fire. And that's good for the Lib Dems in the 50(?) seats they can put on a decent show in, and good for Labour everywhere else in England.
Damned with faint praise there, much?
Electorally the current Tory team are simply not up to it. Activists locally getting restless. Suspect another bad set of locals would be Rishi's last.
May 24 is much too far into the endgame for a putsch.
If May 2024 shows Tory MPs down to the 91st safest (as per recent polling) losing their seats, 24 hours would be time enough.
It takes 24 seconds for a PM to call a General Election.
You know that the constitutional advice on a PM requesting a dissolution in the event of his imminent ousting is that it won't be accepted, right?
The Conservatives and Labour will always be the two main parties... until they are not.
Time was when: ...every boy and every gal That’s born into the world alive Is either a little Liberal Or else a little Conservative!
Neither party has a divine right to compete for power; it's not inconceivable that the LDs replace the Tories permanently (until the next change).
The oddness of the current polling is that we keep getting mad predictions of Labour winning everything everywhere. Supposedly that Channel 4 Poll last night had Labour taking Richmond off Sunak.
The electorate have shown they are well up for tactical voting. There is no mass desire for Sunak in the way there was for Blair. But there is a mass demand to get shut of this government. And people showing that they are motivated and well informed about how to vote to bring that about.
If there truly was a Tory collapse, surely there would be scores more LibDems elected rather than Labour winning Richmond. Some Greens too. But in what gets simplified as a two party choice the pollsters interpret national polls nationally instead of looking at reality.
Compare and contrast the LD vote in a seat we're the ABC choice in vs a seat where its Labour. In one seat we pick up a 5 figure majority, In the other seat we lose our deposit. That is what we can expect in the GE - Labour and LD candidates winning outrageous seats whilst their colleagues elsewhere lose their deposit.
Forget UNS.
All sounds entirely sensible, until you remember how poorly the LDs have performed at national elections since 2010.
Which is where Dave'n'George were smarter than the current team.
If Lib and Lab take potshots at each other (2015 due to coalition fallout, 2019 due to the awfulness of Jez 2.0), Conservatives can do well without too much difficulty.
By being so awful, the 2019-now government has made it clear to the red and yellow teams where they should be aiming their fire. And that's good for the Lib Dems in the 50(?) seats they can put on a decent show in, and good for Labour everywhere else in England.
Damned with faint praise there, much?
Electorally the current Tory team are simply not up to it. Activists locally getting restless. Suspect another bad set of locals would be Rishi's last.
Blimey, that would make six Tory PMs since 2016... Hardly screams strong and stable. You want to give the people who chose Truss another pop at selecting the leader of a UN P5 and G7 economy? Remind me of the definition of insanity, again.
So its better to have the person who lost to Truss?
It's not about strong and stable; it's about scraping the barnacles off the boat preparing the party for an election.
For the 2019 voting Tory brand AND most of the recent activist base, the biggest barnacles are in No 10 and No 11.
But to an outsider, the recent activist base seems a little…fringe, to put it politely. Not sure the party will fare well by playing to them.
Nope, the recent activist base is the most diverse (in every respect) that I can remember since 2005. It is also the largest in living memory.
It is a shame that the statist centrism of Sunak has alienated such a broad coalition.
Intriguing, if accurate (not doubting your experience, I just haven’t heard that elsewhere). Could that broad coalition be the basis for rebuilding in opposition? What, broadly, does it stand for?
The Conservatives and Labour will always be the two main parties... until they are not.
Time was when: ...every boy and every gal That’s born into the world alive Is either a little Liberal Or else a little Conservative!
Neither party has a divine right to compete for power; it's not inconceivable that the LDs replace the Tories permanently (until the next change).
The oddness of the current polling is that we keep getting mad predictions of Labour winning everything everywhere. Supposedly that Channel 4 Poll last night had Labour taking Richmond off Sunak.
The electorate have shown they are well up for tactical voting. There is no mass desire for Sunak in the way there was for Blair. But there is a mass demand to get shut of this government. And people showing that they are motivated and well informed about how to vote to bring that about.
If there truly was a Tory collapse, surely there would be scores more LibDems elected rather than Labour winning Richmond. Some Greens too. But in what gets simplified as a two party choice the pollsters interpret national polls nationally instead of looking at reality.
Compare and contrast the LD vote in a seat we're the ABC choice in vs a seat where its Labour. In one seat we pick up a 5 figure majority, In the other seat we lose our deposit. That is what we can expect in the GE - Labour and LD candidates winning outrageous seats whilst their colleagues elsewhere lose their deposit.
Forget UNS.
All sounds entirely sensible, until you remember how poorly the LDs have performed at national elections since 2010.
Which is where Dave'n'George were smarter than the current team.
If Lib and Lab take potshots at each other (2015 due to coalition fallout, 2019 due to the awfulness of Jez 2.0), Conservatives can do well without too much difficulty.
By being so awful, the 2019-now government has made it clear to the red and yellow teams where they should be aiming their fire. And that's good for the Lib Dems in the 50(?) seats they can put on a decent show in, and good for Labour everywhere else in England.
Damned with faint praise there, much?
Electorally the current Tory team are simply not up to it. Activists locally getting restless. Suspect another bad set of locals would be Rishi's last.
Blimey, that would make six Tory PMs since 2016... Hardly screams strong and stable. You want to give the people who chose Truss another pop at selecting the leader of a UN P5 and G7 economy? Remind me of the definition of insanity, again.
So its better to have the person who lost to Truss?
It's not about strong and stable; it's about scraping the barnacles off the boat preparing the party for an election.
For the 2019 voting Tory brand AND most of the recent activist base, the biggest barnacles are in No 10 and No 11.
But what are you suggesting instead ?
Nobody is going to believe promises of unfunded tax cuts.
And few Conservatives seem to want to boast about full employment and NHS employment increasing by 300k since 2019.
Tackling public sector pension entitlement, and reducing the size of the civil service.
Freeing the country from the interfering 'man from the govt, here to help'.
The Conservatives and Labour will always be the two main parties... until they are not.
Time was when: ...every boy and every gal That’s born into the world alive Is either a little Liberal Or else a little Conservative!
Neither party has a divine right to compete for power; it's not inconceivable that the LDs replace the Tories permanently (until the next change).
The oddness of the current polling is that we keep getting mad predictions of Labour winning everything everywhere. Supposedly that Channel 4 Poll last night had Labour taking Richmond off Sunak.
The electorate have shown they are well up for tactical voting. There is no mass desire for Sunak in the way there was for Blair. But there is a mass demand to get shut of this government. And people showing that they are motivated and well informed about how to vote to bring that about.
If there truly was a Tory collapse, surely there would be scores more LibDems elected rather than Labour winning Richmond. Some Greens too. But in what gets simplified as a two party choice the pollsters interpret national polls nationally instead of looking at reality.
Compare and contrast the LD vote in a seat we're the ABC choice in vs a seat where its Labour. In one seat we pick up a 5 figure majority, In the other seat we lose our deposit. That is what we can expect in the GE - Labour and LD candidates winning outrageous seats whilst their colleagues elsewhere lose their deposit.
Forget UNS.
All sounds entirely sensible, until you remember how poorly the LDs have performed at national elections since 2010.
Which is where Dave'n'George were smarter than the current team.
If Lib and Lab take potshots at each other (2015 due to coalition fallout, 2019 due to the awfulness of Jez 2.0), Conservatives can do well without too much difficulty.
By being so awful, the 2019-now government has made it clear to the red and yellow teams where they should be aiming their fire. And that's good for the Lib Dems in the 50(?) seats they can put on a decent show in, and good for Labour everywhere else in England.
Damned with faint praise there, much?
Electorally the current Tory team are simply not up to it. Activists locally getting restless. Suspect another bad set of locals would be Rishi's last.
Blimey, that would make six Tory PMs since 2016... Hardly screams strong and stable. You want to give the people who chose Truss another pop at selecting the leader of a UN P5 and G7 economy? Remind me of the definition of insanity, again.
So its better to have the person who lost to Truss?
It's not about strong and stable; it's about scraping the barnacles off the boat preparing the party for an election.
For the 2019 voting Tory brand AND most of the recent activist base, the biggest barnacles are in No 10 and No 11.
As a Labour supporter I'd be delighted to see the Tories plunge themselves into another leadership crisis, so please don't let me stop you!
The Conservatives and Labour will always be the two main parties... until they are not.
Time was when: ...every boy and every gal That’s born into the world alive Is either a little Liberal Or else a little Conservative!
Neither party has a divine right to compete for power; it's not inconceivable that the LDs replace the Tories permanently (until the next change).
The oddness of the current polling is that we keep getting mad predictions of Labour winning everything everywhere. Supposedly that Channel 4 Poll last night had Labour taking Richmond off Sunak.
The electorate have shown they are well up for tactical voting. There is no mass desire for Sunak in the way there was for Blair. But there is a mass demand to get shut of this government. And people showing that they are motivated and well informed about how to vote to bring that about.
If there truly was a Tory collapse, surely there would be scores more LibDems elected rather than Labour winning Richmond. Some Greens too. But in what gets simplified as a two party choice the pollsters interpret national polls nationally instead of looking at reality.
Compare and contrast the LD vote in a seat we're the ABC choice in vs a seat where its Labour. In one seat we pick up a 5 figure majority, In the other seat we lose our deposit. That is what we can expect in the GE - Labour and LD candidates winning outrageous seats whilst their colleagues elsewhere lose their deposit.
Forget UNS.
All sounds entirely sensible, until you remember how poorly the LDs have performed at national elections since 2010.
Which is where Dave'n'George were smarter than the current team.
If Lib and Lab take potshots at each other (2015 due to coalition fallout, 2019 due to the awfulness of Jez 2.0), Conservatives can do well without too much difficulty.
By being so awful, the 2019-now government has made it clear to the red and yellow teams where they should be aiming their fire. And that's good for the Lib Dems in the 50(?) seats they can put on a decent show in, and good for Labour everywhere else in England.
Damned with faint praise there, much?
Electorally the current Tory team are simply not up to it. Activists locally getting restless. Suspect another bad set of locals would be Rishi's last.
Blimey, that would make six Tory PMs since 2016... Hardly screams strong and stable. You want to give the people who chose Truss another pop at selecting the leader of a UN P5 and G7 economy? Remind me of the definition of insanity, again.
So its better to have the person who lost to Truss?
It's not about strong and stable; it's about scraping the barnacles off the boat preparing the party for an election.
For the 2019 voting Tory brand AND most of the recent activist base, the biggest barnacles are in No 10 and No 11.
But to an outsider, the recent activist base seems a little…fringe, to put it politely. Not sure the party will fare well by playing to them.
Nope, the recent activist base is the most diverse (in every respect) that I can remember since 2005. It is also the largest in living memory.
It is a shame that the statist centrism of Sunak has alienated such a broad coalition.
Intriguing, if accurate (not doubting your experience, I just haven’t heard that elsewhere). Could that broad coalition be the basis for rebuilding in opposition? What, broadly, does it stand for?
Broadest age range, class range, ideology range.
In my area (blue wall), far more fiscally dry than the government, and socially liberal (the socially illiberal are generally not 'joiners' in my experience). Dislike the big state.
The Conservatives and Labour will always be the two main parties... until they are not.
Time was when: ...every boy and every gal That’s born into the world alive Is either a little Liberal Or else a little Conservative!
Neither party has a divine right to compete for power; it's not inconceivable that the LDs replace the Tories permanently (until the next change).
The oddness of the current polling is that we keep getting mad predictions of Labour winning everything everywhere. Supposedly that Channel 4 Poll last night had Labour taking Richmond off Sunak.
The electorate have shown they are well up for tactical voting. There is no mass desire for Sunak in the way there was for Blair. But there is a mass demand to get shut of this government. And people showing that they are motivated and well informed about how to vote to bring that about.
If there truly was a Tory collapse, surely there would be scores more LibDems elected rather than Labour winning Richmond. Some Greens too. But in what gets simplified as a two party choice the pollsters interpret national polls nationally instead of looking at reality.
Compare and contrast the LD vote in a seat we're the ABC choice in vs a seat where its Labour. In one seat we pick up a 5 figure majority, In the other seat we lose our deposit. That is what we can expect in the GE - Labour and LD candidates winning outrageous seats whilst their colleagues elsewhere lose their deposit.
Forget UNS.
All sounds entirely sensible, until you remember how poorly the LDs have performed at national elections since 2010.
Which is where Dave'n'George were smarter than the current team.
If Lib and Lab take potshots at each other (2015 due to coalition fallout, 2019 due to the awfulness of Jez 2.0), Conservatives can do well without too much difficulty.
By being so awful, the 2019-now government has made it clear to the red and yellow teams where they should be aiming their fire. And that's good for the Lib Dems in the 50(?) seats they can put on a decent show in, and good for Labour everywhere else in England.
Damned with faint praise there, much?
Electorally the current Tory team are simply not up to it. Activists locally getting restless. Suspect another bad set of locals would be Rishi's last.
May 24 is much too far into the endgame for a putsch.
I don't think there will be a putsch because the remaining Tories are too bitterly enraged by the other factions to agree on a unity candidate.
But if that changed, why would May 24 be too late? Lets assume the Tories have a catastrophic election night with losses up and down the land showing that the ABC apocalypse is coming and coming hard.
Mrs Brady polishes his little pearl revolver and goes to Number 10 again again. We get an announcement about the rules for the leadership contest, and then swathes of the party declare fealty to Lee Anderson.
By the end of May Anderson is MP and has the summer and the autumn to transform the political narrative. Instead of 30p, the Tories will bribe the electorate with 50p. A maelstrom of campaigning where they try and prove that Starmer will steal your extra 20p. "I always said he was a Kid Starver" said ex Labour member and now Tory PPC for Don Valley BJO.
"Fifty Pee or Fuck Off" is the Tory conference slogan that gets the pundits aghast and the voters enthralled. The Mail publishes a letter proving that there is a woke leftie trans lawyer taking orders directly from Kid Starver who is planning to give your extra 20p to child rapists now being released into an open trans prison to be built IN YOUR TOWN!
The Conservatives and Labour will always be the two main parties... until they are not.
Time was when: ...every boy and every gal That’s born into the world alive Is either a little Liberal Or else a little Conservative!
Neither party has a divine right to compete for power; it's not inconceivable that the LDs replace the Tories permanently (until the next change).
The oddness of the current polling is that we keep getting mad predictions of Labour winning everything everywhere. Supposedly that Channel 4 Poll last night had Labour taking Richmond off Sunak.
The electorate have shown they are well up for tactical voting. There is no mass desire for Sunak in the way there was for Blair. But there is a mass demand to get shut of this government. And people showing that they are motivated and well informed about how to vote to bring that about.
If there truly was a Tory collapse, surely there would be scores more LibDems elected rather than Labour winning Richmond. Some Greens too. But in what gets simplified as a two party choice the pollsters interpret national polls nationally instead of looking at reality.
Compare and contrast the LD vote in a seat we're the ABC choice in vs a seat where its Labour. In one seat we pick up a 5 figure majority, In the other seat we lose our deposit. That is what we can expect in the GE - Labour and LD candidates winning outrageous seats whilst their colleagues elsewhere lose their deposit.
Forget UNS.
All sounds entirely sensible, until you remember how poorly the LDs have performed at national elections since 2010.
Which is where Dave'n'George were smarter than the current team.
If Lib and Lab take potshots at each other (2015 due to coalition fallout, 2019 due to the awfulness of Jez 2.0), Conservatives can do well without too much difficulty.
By being so awful, the 2019-now government has made it clear to the red and yellow teams where they should be aiming their fire. And that's good for the Lib Dems in the 50(?) seats they can put on a decent show in, and good for Labour everywhere else in England.
Damned with faint praise there, much?
Electorally the current Tory team are simply not up to it. Activists locally getting restless. Suspect another bad set of locals would be Rishi's last.
May 24 is much too far into the endgame for a putsch.
If May 2024 shows Tory MPs down to the 91st safest (as per recent polling) losing their seats, 24 hours would be time enough.
It takes 24 seconds for a PM to call a General Election.
You know that the constitutional advice on a PM requesting a dissolution in the event of his imminent ousting is that it won't be accepted, right?
No, I didn't know that. I do know the Lascelles convention if that is what you mean, which states that refusal is an OPTION iff
1. the existing Parliament is still "vital, viable, and capable of doing its job", 2. a general election would be "detrimental to the national economy", and 3. the sovereign could "rely on finding another prime minister who could govern for a reasonable period with a working majority in the House of Commons".
1 and 2 LOL, to satisfy 3 you're going to have to have pre-coronated someone again.
This government *is* fiscally dry, however they’ve had to increase the number of civil servants due to Brexit and they continue to stuff gold down the throat of the client vote.
I don't really understand the tone of this article or much of the discussion on a Labour majority on this forum. Yes, it sounds like a big job to swing over 120 seats, but the Tories have imploded and done it all to themselves without Starmer having to do any work - indeed he seems to be using it as an opportunity to actively alienate typical Labour voters. Starmer for PM and a Lab majority is an almost certainty (as much as I find Starmer appalling for his lies to his membership about what he was going to stand on and his desire to turn the Labour party into Tory lite).
To find this kind of swing unlikely we must all ignore the evidence of our eyes - we can see the polls showing Lab between 15 - 20% ahead. We can see the projections that put the Cons at wipe out levels of bad (less than 75 MPs total) to just very bad (around 150 MPs total). We can see that this government doesn't actually have any policies it wishes to implement to improve people's lives, and we can see that the policies it has done have done sweet fanny adams.
It is to disregard reality to think that Starmer would somehow go into a GE with the polling numbers he has and not be favourite to win and win big - and any situation where he doesn't should not be seen as "this was a hard hill to climb" but as a monumental failure. I don't give Starmer any credit for being in this position - Johnson and Truss did this, and Sunak doesn't have the skill to right the ship for the Tories.
The Conservatives and Labour will always be the two main parties... until they are not.
Time was when: ...every boy and every gal That’s born into the world alive Is either a little Liberal Or else a little Conservative!
Neither party has a divine right to compete for power; it's not inconceivable that the LDs replace the Tories permanently (until the next change).
The oddness of the current polling is that we keep getting mad predictions of Labour winning everything everywhere. Supposedly that Channel 4 Poll last night had Labour taking Richmond off Sunak.
The electorate have shown they are well up for tactical voting. There is no mass desire for Sunak in the way there was for Blair. But there is a mass demand to get shut of this government. And people showing that they are motivated and well informed about how to vote to bring that about.
If there truly was a Tory collapse, surely there would be scores more LibDems elected rather than Labour winning Richmond. Some Greens too. But in what gets simplified as a two party choice the pollsters interpret national polls nationally instead of looking at reality.
Compare and contrast the LD vote in a seat we're the ABC choice in vs a seat where its Labour. In one seat we pick up a 5 figure majority, In the other seat we lose our deposit. That is what we can expect in the GE - Labour and LD candidates winning outrageous seats whilst their colleagues elsewhere lose their deposit.
Forget UNS.
All sounds entirely sensible, until you remember how poorly the LDs have performed at national elections since 2010.
Which is where Dave'n'George were smarter than the current team.
If Lib and Lab take potshots at each other (2015 due to coalition fallout, 2019 due to the awfulness of Jez 2.0), Conservatives can do well without too much difficulty.
By being so awful, the 2019-now government has made it clear to the red and yellow teams where they should be aiming their fire. And that's good for the Lib Dems in the 50(?) seats they can put on a decent show in, and good for Labour everywhere else in England.
Damned with faint praise there, much?
Electorally the current Tory team are simply not up to it. Activists locally getting restless. Suspect another bad set of locals would be Rishi's last.
Blimey, that would make six Tory PMs since 2016... Hardly screams strong and stable. You want to give the people who chose Truss another pop at selecting the leader of a UN P5 and G7 economy? Remind me of the definition of insanity, again.
So its better to have the person who lost to Truss?
It's not about strong and stable; it's about scraping the barnacles off the boat preparing the party for an election.
For the 2019 voting Tory brand AND most of the recent activist base, the biggest barnacles are in No 10 and No 11.
But what are you suggesting instead ?
Nobody is going to believe promises of unfunded tax cuts.
And few Conservatives seem to want to boast about full employment and NHS employment increasing by 300k since 2019.
Tackling public sector pension entitlement, and reducing the size of the civil service.
Freeing the country from the interfering 'man from the govt, here to help'.
Which leads to the response of "you've had 13 years to do that".
Now they're traditional conservative/libertarian ideas but how much money would they save and how much bureaucracy would they reduce.
Not a lot of either and nor would they get you many votes.
Because there are many millions of people who don't want less help from the government but instead think the government should be helping them more.
And that includes large parts of the Conservatives oldie voting base.
The Conservatives and Labour will always be the two main parties... until they are not.
Time was when: ...every boy and every gal That’s born into the world alive Is either a little Liberal Or else a little Conservative!
Neither party has a divine right to compete for power; it's not inconceivable that the LDs replace the Tories permanently (until the next change).
The oddness of the current polling is that we keep getting mad predictions of Labour winning everything everywhere. Supposedly that Channel 4 Poll last night had Labour taking Richmond off Sunak.
The electorate have shown they are well up for tactical voting. There is no mass desire for Sunak in the way there was for Blair. But there is a mass demand to get shut of this government. And people showing that they are motivated and well informed about how to vote to bring that about.
If there truly was a Tory collapse, surely there would be scores more LibDems elected rather than Labour winning Richmond. Some Greens too. But in what gets simplified as a two party choice the pollsters interpret national polls nationally instead of looking at reality.
Compare and contrast the LD vote in a seat we're the ABC choice in vs a seat where its Labour. In one seat we pick up a 5 figure majority, In the other seat we lose our deposit. That is what we can expect in the GE - Labour and LD candidates winning outrageous seats whilst their colleagues elsewhere lose their deposit.
Forget UNS.
All sounds entirely sensible, until you remember how poorly the LDs have performed at national elections since 2010.
Which is where Dave'n'George were smarter than the current team.
If Lib and Lab take potshots at each other (2015 due to coalition fallout, 2019 due to the awfulness of Jez 2.0), Conservatives can do well without too much difficulty.
By being so awful, the 2019-now government has made it clear to the red and yellow teams where they should be aiming their fire. And that's good for the Lib Dems in the 50(?) seats they can put on a decent show in, and good for Labour everywhere else in England.
Damned with faint praise there, much?
Electorally the current Tory team are simply not up to it. Activists locally getting restless. Suspect another bad set of locals would be Rishi's last.
May 24 is much too far into the endgame for a putsch.
If May 2024 shows Tory MPs down to the 91st safest (as per recent polling) losing their seats, 24 hours would be time enough.
It takes 24 seconds for a PM to call a General Election.
You know that the constitutional advice on a PM requesting a dissolution in the event of his imminent ousting is that it won't be accepted, right?
No, I didn't know that. I do know the Lascelles convention if that is what you mean, which states that refusal is an OPTION iff
1. the existing Parliament is still "vital, viable, and capable of doing its job", 2. a general election would be "detrimental to the national economy", and 3. the sovereign could "rely on finding another prime minister who could govern for a reasonable period with a working majority in the House of Commons".
1 and 2 LOL, to satisfy 3 you're going to have to have pre-coronated someone again.
1 is met, there is a majority Government.
2 is no longer part of the Convention AFAIK.
3 no need for a pre-coronation, the convention is that governments can undergo leadership campaigns while in office.
If the PM were ousted and a majority of the Commons were willing to have the Deputy PM (currently Oliver Dowden) or someone else as interim PM until the end of the leadership campaign, then Lascelles condition 3 would be met too.
Is there a definitive book on the Normandy landings/campaign?
“Sand and steel” is the best I’ve read, although it’s only the lead up and D-Day. Gives a really good story of all the preparations, which is often skipped over in many books which start with the airborne drop.
The Conservatives and Labour will always be the two main parties... until they are not.
Time was when: ...every boy and every gal That’s born into the world alive Is either a little Liberal Or else a little Conservative!
Neither party has a divine right to compete for power; it's not inconceivable that the LDs replace the Tories permanently (until the next change).
The oddness of the current polling is that we keep getting mad predictions of Labour winning everything everywhere. Supposedly that Channel 4 Poll last night had Labour taking Richmond off Sunak.
The electorate have shown they are well up for tactical voting. There is no mass desire for Sunak in the way there was for Blair. But there is a mass demand to get shut of this government. And people showing that they are motivated and well informed about how to vote to bring that about.
If there truly was a Tory collapse, surely there would be scores more LibDems elected rather than Labour winning Richmond. Some Greens too. But in what gets simplified as a two party choice the pollsters interpret national polls nationally instead of looking at reality.
Compare and contrast the LD vote in a seat we're the ABC choice in vs a seat where its Labour. In one seat we pick up a 5 figure majority, In the other seat we lose our deposit. That is what we can expect in the GE - Labour and LD candidates winning outrageous seats whilst their colleagues elsewhere lose their deposit.
Forget UNS.
All sounds entirely sensible, until you remember how poorly the LDs have performed at national elections since 2010.
Which is where Dave'n'George were smarter than the current team.
If Lib and Lab take potshots at each other (2015 due to coalition fallout, 2019 due to the awfulness of Jez 2.0), Conservatives can do well without too much difficulty.
By being so awful, the 2019-now government has made it clear to the red and yellow teams where they should be aiming their fire. And that's good for the Lib Dems in the 50(?) seats they can put on a decent show in, and good for Labour everywhere else in England.
Damned with faint praise there, much?
Electorally the current Tory team are simply not up to it. Activists locally getting restless. Suspect another bad set of locals would be Rishi's last.
Blimey, that would make six Tory PMs since 2016... Hardly screams strong and stable. You want to give the people who chose Truss another pop at selecting the leader of a UN P5 and G7 economy? Remind me of the definition of insanity, again.
So its better to have the person who lost to Truss?
It's not about strong and stable; it's about scraping the barnacles off the boat preparing the party for an election.
For the 2019 voting Tory brand AND most of the recent activist base, the biggest barnacles are in No 10 and No 11.
But to an outsider, the recent activist base seems a little…fringe, to put it politely. Not sure the party will fare well by playing to them.
Nope, the recent activist base is the most diverse (in every respect) that I can remember since 2005. It is also the largest in living memory.
It is a shame that the statist centrism of Sunak has alienated such a broad coalition.
Intriguing, if accurate (not doubting your experience, I just haven’t heard that elsewhere). Could that broad coalition be the basis for rebuilding in opposition? What, broadly, does it stand for?
Broadest age range, class range, ideology range.
In my area (blue wall), far more fiscally dry than the government, and socially liberal (the socially illiberal are generally not 'joiners' in my experience). Dislike the big state.
Gosh, sounds like a small c Conservative Party! I can definitely see the gap for such a grouping to thrive once the current ideological bankruptcy is swept away.
The challenge, as far as I can see it, is that whilst people don’t like a big state, they often like the effects of a big state (or rather, dislike the effects of reducing the big state). The recent announcement about barn conversions and its impact on national parks springs to mind: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/aug/07/proposals-to-ease-planning-laws-in-englands-national-parks-condemned?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other. As soon as you advocate for the details of a smaller state you are open to attack as to the impact of removing state bureaucracy. Not sure how you answer that.
The Conservatives and Labour will always be the two main parties... until they are not.
Time was when: ...every boy and every gal That’s born into the world alive Is either a little Liberal Or else a little Conservative!
Neither party has a divine right to compete for power; it's not inconceivable that the LDs replace the Tories permanently (until the next change).
The oddness of the current polling is that we keep getting mad predictions of Labour winning everything everywhere. Supposedly that Channel 4 Poll last night had Labour taking Richmond off Sunak.
The electorate have shown they are well up for tactical voting. There is no mass desire for Sunak in the way there was for Blair. But there is a mass demand to get shut of this government. And people showing that they are motivated and well informed about how to vote to bring that about.
If there truly was a Tory collapse, surely there would be scores more LibDems elected rather than Labour winning Richmond. Some Greens too. But in what gets simplified as a two party choice the pollsters interpret national polls nationally instead of looking at reality.
Compare and contrast the LD vote in a seat we're the ABC choice in vs a seat where its Labour. In one seat we pick up a 5 figure majority, In the other seat we lose our deposit. That is what we can expect in the GE - Labour and LD candidates winning outrageous seats whilst their colleagues elsewhere lose their deposit.
Forget UNS.
All sounds entirely sensible, until you remember how poorly the LDs have performed at national elections since 2010.
Which is where Dave'n'George were smarter than the current team.
If Lib and Lab take potshots at each other (2015 due to coalition fallout, 2019 due to the awfulness of Jez 2.0), Conservatives can do well without too much difficulty.
By being so awful, the 2019-now government has made it clear to the red and yellow teams where they should be aiming their fire. And that's good for the Lib Dems in the 50(?) seats they can put on a decent show in, and good for Labour everywhere else in England.
Damned with faint praise there, much?
Electorally the current Tory team are simply not up to it. Activists locally getting restless. Suspect another bad set of locals would be Rishi's last.
May 24 is much too far into the endgame for a putsch.
I don't think there will be a putsch because the remaining Tories are too bitterly enraged by the other factions to agree on a unity candidate.
But if that changed, why would May 24 be too late? Lets assume the Tories have a catastrophic election night with losses up and down the land showing that the ABC apocalypse is coming and coming hard.
Mrs Brady polishes his little pearl revolver and goes to Number 10 again again. We get an announcement about the rules for the leadership contest, and then swathes of the party declare fealty to Lee Anderson.
By the end of May Anderson is MP and has the summer and the autumn to transform the political narrative. Instead of 30p, the Tories will bribe the electorate with 50p. A maelstrom of campaigning where they try and prove that Starmer will steal your extra 20p. "I always said he was a Kid Starver" said ex Labour member and now Tory PPC for Don Valley BJO.
"Fifty Pee or Fuck Off" is the Tory conference slogan that gets the pundits aghast and the voters enthralled. The Mail publishes a letter proving that there is a woke leftie trans lawyer taking orders directly from Kid Starver who is planning to give your extra 20p to child rapists now being released into an open trans prison to be built IN YOUR TOWN!
Etc etc
Do people not think that May 24 will be when a GE is held? The only thing Sunak has left to his advantage is when he can call an election. If he clings on til the bitter end, a la Brown, he will have no hope of saving anything. I kind of assumed a GE at the same time as the locals - the party will stand or fall locally and nationally all in one go. I can't imagine local governments can afford to run two big election cycles in 6-8 months, and I don't suppose Sunak wants to get whomped in the locals and have a lame duck end of term.
The Conservatives and Labour will always be the two main parties... until they are not.
Time was when: ...every boy and every gal That’s born into the world alive Is either a little Liberal Or else a little Conservative!
Neither party has a divine right to compete for power; it's not inconceivable that the LDs replace the Tories permanently (until the next change).
The oddness of the current polling is that we keep getting mad predictions of Labour winning everything everywhere. Supposedly that Channel 4 Poll last night had Labour taking Richmond off Sunak.
The electorate have shown they are well up for tactical voting. There is no mass desire for Sunak in the way there was for Blair. But there is a mass demand to get shut of this government. And people showing that they are motivated and well informed about how to vote to bring that about.
If there truly was a Tory collapse, surely there would be scores more LibDems elected rather than Labour winning Richmond. Some Greens too. But in what gets simplified as a two party choice the pollsters interpret national polls nationally instead of looking at reality.
Compare and contrast the LD vote in a seat we're the ABC choice in vs a seat where its Labour. In one seat we pick up a 5 figure majority, In the other seat we lose our deposit. That is what we can expect in the GE - Labour and LD candidates winning outrageous seats whilst their colleagues elsewhere lose their deposit.
Forget UNS.
All sounds entirely sensible, until you remember how poorly the LDs have performed at national elections since 2010.
Which is where Dave'n'George were smarter than the current team.
If Lib and Lab take potshots at each other (2015 due to coalition fallout, 2019 due to the awfulness of Jez 2.0), Conservatives can do well without too much difficulty.
By being so awful, the 2019-now government has made it clear to the red and yellow teams where they should be aiming their fire. And that's good for the Lib Dems in the 50(?) seats they can put on a decent show in, and good for Labour everywhere else in England.
Damned with faint praise there, much?
Electorally the current Tory team are simply not up to it. Activists locally getting restless. Suspect another bad set of locals would be Rishi's last.
Blimey, that would make six Tory PMs since 2016... Hardly screams strong and stable. You want to give the people who chose Truss another pop at selecting the leader of a UN P5 and G7 economy? Remind me of the definition of insanity, again.
So its better to have the person who lost to Truss?
It's not about strong and stable; it's about scraping the barnacles off the boat preparing the party for an election.
For the 2019 voting Tory brand AND most of the recent activist base, the biggest barnacles are in No 10 and No 11.
But what are you suggesting instead ?
Nobody is going to believe promises of unfunded tax cuts.
And few Conservatives seem to want to boast about full employment and NHS employment increasing by 300k since 2019.
Tackling public sector pension entitlement, and reducing the size of the civil service.
Freeing the country from the interfering 'man from the govt, here to help'.
Which leads to the response of "you've had 13 years to do that".
Now they're traditional conservative/libertarian ideas but how much money would they save and how much bureaucracy would they reduce.
Not a lot of either and nor would they get you many votes.
Because there are many millions of people who don't want less help from the government but instead think the government should be helping them more.
And that includes large parts of the Conservatives oldie voting base.
It saves money, cuts the deficit, and powers growth at the same time.
People need to stand on their own feet. Trying socialism lite usually leads to people wanting full fat socialism, until it then runs out of money and people remember that nothing is free....
Is there a definitive book on the Normandy landings/campaign?
Beevor's is readable. Can't vouch for accuracy.
I sense, mainly from twitter/X, that there's been a bit of backlash against Beevor. It seems to revolve around him overestimating the prowess of the Heer and sacrifice of the Red Army while downplaying the achievements of our stout Tommies and GIs.
"Every police officer in Northern Ireland has data compromised in 'monumental' breach due to human error
The PSNI Assistant Chief Constable admitted the breach was made in "human error" and apologised to colleagues whose data was made public for two and a half to three hours."
Amazingly, some dangerous idiots still want the government to have yet more of our intimate personal data, even though it's obvious they can't keep it safe. Last year Labour were advocating ID cards to control illegal immigration.
... I would regard id cards as a sensible and proportionate measure...
UK 2020s politics is a long stream of illiberal measures designed to burden law-abiding citizens with whatever the fashionable nostrums of the day are. ID cards is a thing that keeps popping up, and it gets knocked down every time.
Not very effectively knocked down then. It's about 1% as scary to me as the surveillance by facial/numberplate recognition/cell phone which goes on 24/7 so if it has any practical value let's do it.
Again, coercing the individual. The question is not whether it is a good idea, but whether it is moral to fine/jail somebody for refusing to carry one. That would be state overkill.
When I lived in Switzerland i was legally obliged to carry my ID card/foreigner permit (carte des etrangers) at all times and if it was requested by the police or an official and I didn’t have it then I was liable to a fine. There was not one second where I felt that it was oppression by the state or an intrusion into my civil liberties.
In fact it was actually great to have one as with it so many activities were quicker - opening a bank account, collecting a parcel, registering with a gov department re tax or similar - because it was an official compulsory ID card that no functionary would refuse to accept as ID.
Sigh.
For the nth time. The problem isn’t the ID card. The problem isn’t the unique identifying code on it. The problem isn’t even the potential use of that unique code as a key on databases.
The problem is that every single time ID cards have been proposed (and he time that they were, briefly, actually implemented), they come with an attempt to link all our personal information together. And link it to biometric data - finger prints, face recognition. etc. and the make it accessible to everyone.
In the last such scheme, they were going to make everything the NHS had on you (for instance) available to council officials investigating fly tipping. When asked why, the response was that segregating data would be difficult and slow things down.
So if your finger print day was stolen, you’d just have to get new finger prints, eh?
It should be noted that personal for Important People (Politicians, senior civil servants, famous people who the government liked) *was* to be segregated. #NU10K
The only saving grace was that such an insane breach of every concept of data security would have gone the way of all such government projects. Collapsed after spending billions. Though in this case it would have got to the data leaking stage
Time to repost this admittedly brilliant analysis from a couple of years ago:
I’ve always said I’m in favour of ID cards, if the following conditions are met:
1) They’re issued for free
2) You don’t have to carry them at all times
3) You can use them chip and pin to access all government services - so they would replace passports and driving licences, not augment them
4) That you had the power to access all information the government holds on you, and amend it where it is wrong
5) That civil servants who access your data are logged, and you can see who they are and why they accessed it
6) That if somebody has accessed your data inappropriately you have the right to take legal action against them, funded by the government.
And numbers 4-6 will not happen while any civil servant breathes air.
Civil Servants are only human, and humans are nosy, so the more information you make available to government officials the more information they will see.
If you think that if you had free access to a super-government database that you wouldn't be looking at your neighbour's income then you are kidding yourself. The best that can be hoped for is that you would have the good sense not to tell anyone that you had done so and keep the information to yourself.
Meanwhile in Estonia, all of those qualifiers apply, and the Estonian X-road (google) decentralizes the stores of data and provides a sentry programme for greater security, so there is no central store of data that can be so compromised.
The benefits in terms of efficiency are truly staggering, especially in health care, but the ability to verify your identity in a secure online environment saves a fortune in things like tax collection and financial transactions too.
Eventually Britain will need to adopt at least some part of these systems (and in the DVLA and the Passport Office it did use advice from Estonia)., the problem is that it involves understanding the issues involved and the UK political system is missing leaders with that kind of understanding.
I’ve actually spoken with civil servants on this issue.
The problem is that they are hard wired to believe in the Big Central Database. Access controls are seen as Impeding Good Government.
So all the briefing papers reflect this.
You would need to fire the top five ranks of the Home Office, en masse.
These were the people who thought it was a great idea for the DVLA to sell registered keeper information, to any cowboy parking extortion company that asks nicely.
Time for “Complete Staff Replacement” in the style of the Soviet Army in Red Storm Rising
Electorates change. My generation grew up in the shadow of WW2. We saw the bombsites, our parents had hidden away in air raid shelters, our grandparents had been in the services. Standing Alone, whether historically accurate or not, was ingrained into us. Everywhere we looked, from comics to TV, the war was present. It shaped us and all those around us. Of course it did. But as we die off, that way of seeing the world becomes less politically visceral. For my kids, the end of WW2 is as far away as the end of the Boer War was for me. It inevitably affects how they look at the world and the UK’s place in it.
And, every generation is different.
It may be that Generation Alpha (who will succeed Zoomers/Millennials) will find some of their views and obsessions quaint.
Both my children will be in that cohort.
You mean, your children may end up thinking like you?
They won't. Once they hit their teens, they'll be a bundle of misfiring hormones, nerves and emotions. They'll be influenced by friends, popular culture, increasingly more by social media and advertising. What their old Tory dad thinks won't matter at all to them, in fact they'll actively try and think the polar opposite just for the lolz. It's what happens to all parents, and should be embraced and encouraged.
"Despite the government’s focus on levelling up, the NIESR found wage growth had been fastest in London. It predicted real wage growth of 7% in the capital between the end of 2019 and 2024, compared with a fall of 5% in the West Midlands."
Indeed. Minimum wage is no longer the maximum wage in many industries, especially so in London. Thanks to Brexit, unskilled employees have seen large rises in their pay, especially those who changed jobs during the pandemic.
And yet...
In its quarterly update on the state of the economy, the NIESR said the poorest tenth of the population had been especially hard hit by Britain’s cost of living crisis and would need an income boost of £4,000 a year to have the same living standards they enjoyed in the year before Covid-19 arrived.
The poorest households – hit by weak wage growth, higher debt, the need to devote more of their budgets to expensive energy, food and housing costs; and with few if any savings – would be 17% worse off by the end of 2024 than they were five years earlier. The richest households would be 5% worse off.
Sandpit imagines UK through his Tory blue specs as a tax free emigrant living outside the UK, ie fantasy.
"Despite the government’s focus on levelling up, the NIESR found wage growth had been fastest in London. It predicted real wage growth of 7% in the capital between the end of 2019 and 2024, compared with a fall of 5% in the West Midlands."
Indeed. Minimum wage is no longer the maximum wage in many industries, especially so in London. Thanks to Brexit, unskilled employees have seen large rises in their pay, especially those who changed jobs during the pandemic.
And yet...
In its quarterly update on the state of the economy, the NIESR said the poorest tenth of the population had been especially hard hit by Britain’s cost of living crisis and would need an income boost of £4,000 a year to have the same living standards they enjoyed in the year before Covid-19 arrived.
The poorest households – hit by weak wage growth, higher debt, the need to devote more of their budgets to expensive energy, food and housing costs; and with few if any savings – would be 17% worse off by the end of 2024 than they were five years earlier. The richest households would be 5% worse off.
And yet ...
Its almost as if two distinct things have happened. The pandemic, expensive food, energy etc is because of what has happened across the globe and would have happened with or without Brexit. That the cost of gas has shot up globally, and the UK relies upon gas, is not a Brexit issue.
The fact that the cost of housing is so high is a British issue, but not a Brexit issue. Build more houses to solve that one.
The single largest Brexit issue is that our government has spent the last decade concentrating on little else.
There are precious few benefits, significant ongoing costs, and a large majority of the electorate wish it had never happened.
Would we really be better off if Rees Mogg, Williamson, Truss, Patel, Bozo, Raab, Kwarteng etc had set their "talents" onto improving the NHS or education or the economy instead of Brexit?
I'd say the biggest costs of Brexit are societal division and a decline in the calibre of politicians and political debate.
Without Brexit few if any of them would have been in government.
Which is the point. They are a malign symptom of the enormous Brexit distraction.
This government *is* fiscally dry, however they’ve had to increase the number of civil servants due to Brexit and they continue to stuff gold down the throat of the client vote.
The Conservatives and Labour will always be the two main parties... until they are not.
Time was when: ...every boy and every gal That’s born into the world alive Is either a little Liberal Or else a little Conservative!
Neither party has a divine right to compete for power; it's not inconceivable that the LDs replace the Tories permanently (until the next change).
The oddness of the current polling is that we keep getting mad predictions of Labour winning everything everywhere. Supposedly that Channel 4 Poll last night had Labour taking Richmond off Sunak.
The electorate have shown they are well up for tactical voting. There is no mass desire for Sunak in the way there was for Blair. But there is a mass demand to get shut of this government. And people showing that they are motivated and well informed about how to vote to bring that about.
If there truly was a Tory collapse, surely there would be scores more LibDems elected rather than Labour winning Richmond. Some Greens too. But in what gets simplified as a two party choice the pollsters interpret national polls nationally instead of looking at reality.
Compare and contrast the LD vote in a seat we're the ABC choice in vs a seat where its Labour. In one seat we pick up a 5 figure majority, In the other seat we lose our deposit. That is what we can expect in the GE - Labour and LD candidates winning outrageous seats whilst their colleagues elsewhere lose their deposit.
Forget UNS.
All sounds entirely sensible, until you remember how poorly the LDs have performed at national elections since 2010.
Which is where Dave'n'George were smarter than the current team.
If Lib and Lab take potshots at each other (2015 due to coalition fallout, 2019 due to the awfulness of Jez 2.0), Conservatives can do well without too much difficulty.
By being so awful, the 2019-now government has made it clear to the red and yellow teams where they should be aiming their fire. And that's good for the Lib Dems in the 50(?) seats they can put on a decent show in, and good for Labour everywhere else in England.
Damned with faint praise there, much?
Electorally the current Tory team are simply not up to it. Activists locally getting restless. Suspect another bad set of locals would be Rishi's last.
Blimey, that would make six Tory PMs since 2016... Hardly screams strong and stable. You want to give the people who chose Truss another pop at selecting the leader of a UN P5 and G7 economy? Remind me of the definition of insanity, again.
So its better to have the person who lost to Truss?
It's not about strong and stable; it's about scraping the barnacles off the boat preparing the party for an election.
For the 2019 voting Tory brand AND most of the recent activist base, the biggest barnacles are in No 10 and No 11.
But to an outsider, the recent activist base seems a little…fringe, to put it politely. Not sure the party will fare well by playing to them.
Nope, the recent activist base is the most diverse (in every respect) that I can remember since 2005. It is also the largest in living memory.
It is a shame that the statist centrism of Sunak has alienated such a broad coalition.
Intriguing, if accurate (not doubting your experience, I just haven’t heard that elsewhere). Could that broad coalition be the basis for rebuilding in opposition? What, broadly, does it stand for?
Broadest age range, class range, ideology range.
In my area (blue wall), far more fiscally dry than the government, and socially liberal (the socially illiberal are generally not 'joiners' in my experience). Dislike the big state.
Gosh, sounds like a small c Conservative Party! I can definitely see the gap for such a grouping to thrive once the current ideological bankruptcy is swept away.
The challenge, as far as I can see it, is that whilst people don’t like a big state, they often like the effects of a big state (or rather, dislike the effects of reducing the big state). The recent announcement about barn conversions and its impact on national parks springs to mind: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/aug/07/proposals-to-ease-planning-laws-in-englands-national-parks-condemned?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other. As soon as you advocate for the details of a smaller state you are open to attack as to the impact of removing state bureaucracy. Not sure how you answer that.
A very good point.
The problem is 'vested interest groups' are far given far too much voice because the left wing establishment like perpetuating the bureaucracy and hate the Toooooories.
The biggest failure of our 13 years is not changing this by gutting state funding of quangos and replacing leadership with those who are more like minded.
Hard to find anything to argue with in OGH's summary. At least for yours truly!
Morning all.
@MikeSmithson keeps taking GE2019 as the benchmark. Whilst this looks right on paper, it's an illusion and for punters it's an error. GE2019 was a one-off 'Get Brexit Done' election to unblock the jam created during the Remainer Parliament. Boris Johnson galvanised the voters against the unelectable trotskyite anti-semitic Jeremy Corbyn with the sole aim of Getting Brexit Done. Hence the December election. In many ways GE2019 was NOT a General Election.
The last proper General Election in the UK was June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament. That's your benchmark.
Bet accordingly.
p.s. I'm personally very glad that Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair.
I think I understand the point you are making - whilst the 2019 election is the status quo, its artificial. Ordinarily the Labour task would be considered politically unlikely - as we all said in the aftermath.
But if we consider the 2019 result to be the aberration, then a revision to the norm can be expected to happen as the start of any new electoral move. There are swathes of red wall seats which endless polls have shows will not just revert to Labour but will deliver them 5 figure majorities.
If we bake that 2017 reversion in, the task facing Starmer is much smaller, and much more attainable. Then we look at the two other political low tides from 2015 likely to come back in:
The absence of unionist MPs in Scotland feels like a situation that can't be sustained - so expect 20-30 seats to switch from the motorhome party. The absence of yellow MPs in rural England is already a tide rushing back in. The focus is always on Labour, but as is clear it is the LibDems who will mop up disaffected sane voters in places where "Sink the Boats" makes people feel sick.
So, we reset the Red Wall. We drain out the SNP flood. We remove the dam from the LibDems. And suddenly a thumping Tory defeat is not just possible, it feels likely. To stay in power they need to preserve all three of these artificial positions. Which politically means they need to be Janus, a task they are spectacularly failing to pull off.
Yes, I think the Tories have snookered themselves. It is hard to see any of those 3 fronts being contained next GE. While Scotland is unique, the other 2 fronts play out across most E and W constituencies. They are sociological rather than geographical waves.
Tory unpopularity with the working age population is astonishing. I doubt there’s been anything like it in the history of two-party politics in this country.
Yes, it is deeply concerning.
The only people they seem to look after (and protect from policy) is the retired and they've dug a hole so deep there I struggle to see how they get out now.
Pray tell how they protect the retired. Raising the pittance of the state pension , the worst in the developed world by a country mile is hardly looking after them, it is less than bare minimum.
Hard to find anything to argue with in OGH's summary. At least for yours truly!
Morning all.
@MikeSmithson keeps taking GE2019 as the benchmark. Whilst this looks right on paper, it's an illusion and for punters it's an error. GE2019 was a one-off 'Get Brexit Done' election to unblock the jam created during the Remainer Parliament. Boris Johnson galvanised the voters against the unelectable trotskyite anti-semitic Jeremy Corbyn with the sole aim of Getting Brexit Done. Hence the December election. In many ways GE2019 was NOT a General Election.
The last proper General Election in the UK was June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament. That's your benchmark.
Bet accordingly.
p.s. I'm personally very glad that Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair.
I think I understand the point you are making - whilst the 2019 election is the status quo, its artificial. Ordinarily the Labour task would be considered politically unlikely - as we all said in the aftermath.
But if we consider the 2019 result to be the aberration, then a revision to the norm can be expected to happen as the start of any new electoral move. There are swathes of red wall seats which endless polls have shows will not just revert to Labour but will deliver them 5 figure majorities.
If we bake that 2017 reversion in, the task facing Starmer is much smaller, and much more attainable. Then we look at the two other political low tides from 2015 likely to come back in:
The absence of unionist MPs in Scotland feels like a situation that can't be sustained - so expect 20-30 seats to switch from the motorhome party. The absence of yellow MPs in rural England is already a tide rushing back in. The focus is always on Labour, but as is clear it is the LibDems who will mop up disaffected sane voters in places where "Sink the Boats" makes people feel sick.
So, we reset the Red Wall. We drain out the SNP flood. We remove the dam from the LibDems. And suddenly a thumping Tory defeat is not just possible, it feels likely. To stay in power they need to preserve all three of these artificial positions. Which politically means they need to be Janus, a task they are spectacularly failing to pull off.
Yes, I think the Tories have snookered themselves. It is hard to see any of those 3 fronts being contained next GE. While Scotland is unique, the other 2 fronts play out across most E and W constituencies. They are sociological rather than geographical waves.
Tory unpopularity with the working age population is astonishing. I doubt there’s been anything like it in the history of two-party politics in this country.
Yes, it is deeply concerning.
The only people they seem to look after (and protect from policy) is the retired and they've dug a hole so deep there I struggle to see how they get out now.
Opposition will do a lot of the work.
Labour, in government, will be unlikely to resist the temptation to try to buy pensioner votes. I think some of the bias of the old to the Tories is in fact a bias of the old to the incumbent government.
Things could change quite rapidly, at least in terms of rhetoric and polling. But would a new Tory government, after a Starmer interregnum, be able to resist the temptation to buy pensioner votes? I have my doubts. (Well, okay, not many doubts, I'm fairly confident that governments of both sides will follow the path of least resistance and genuflect to the pensioner vote.)
OTOH, many pensioners will still vote Tory regardless, so why should SKS bother going all out Tory? Or (as remarked to me yesterday) so cowardly in his approach to Brexit etc. that he might as well be Tory. And ditto with baby starving, Scottish referendum, and so on and so forth.
The Tories have gone so far (as already remarked in the thread) it's probably impossible to rebalance things and make a fairer balance with the people actually doing the work without upsetting the pensioner vote irreparably (for instance, by imposing NI on all, or merging it with income tax, or cutting IHT allowances or converting them to CGT).
My argument is mainly grounded on what happened under the previous Labour government, rather than on hypotheticals about the future.
Under the Labour government of 1997-2010* we saw several moves that increased spending on pensioners. We had the first pension lock, to ensure there wasn't a repeat of low inflation leading to a tiny increase in the state pension. We had various freebies given to pensioners - TV licenses, bus passes, fuel allowances.
The consequence of this was seen in election results. In the 2010 GE the bias of the old to vote Tories was at its lowest since 1992.
Expect to see the same again. I'd be gobsmacked if pensioners were not reassured by Labour budgets, and I'd expect votes to change as they did before.
The attraction of buying the votes of pensioners is that it is really simple. The government only has to keep the money flowing. Sorting out the problems for younger voters, such as the housing crisis, might sound simple - just build more houses! - but runs into all sorts of other issues - Who will build them? Will there be enough building materials at a low enough price? Where? - which make them practically more difficult, and even in a best case scenario will take years to deliver tangible results.
* Actually, probably more correctly in the period 2001-2010. I'd have to dig out the details of when the various reforms were made. But the very small pension increase happened in the first Parliament, 1997-2001, and Labour consequently fell further behind with the pensioner vote at the 2001 GE. They learnt their lesson then and I don't think they will be looking for a refresher.
Our pensioners are still mostly boomers, I suppose, but Gen X will soon take them over in that category - can we say the priorities of pensioners will stay the same when that happens? Are Gen Xers who are going into retirement / retirement age better or worse off than their parents? Do they think their kids are as well of as they were at their age? I imagine on social issues the next generation of pensioners will be more liberal on average than the last, even if not as liberal as the young. Will that significantly change that group's typical allegiance to the Tories?
The Conservatives and Labour will always be the two main parties... until they are not.
Time was when: ...every boy and every gal That’s born into the world alive Is either a little Liberal Or else a little Conservative!
Neither party has a divine right to compete for power; it's not inconceivable that the LDs replace the Tories permanently (until the next change).
The oddness of the current polling is that we keep getting mad predictions of Labour winning everything everywhere. Supposedly that Channel 4 Poll last night had Labour taking Richmond off Sunak.
The electorate have shown they are well up for tactical voting. There is no mass desire for Sunak in the way there was for Blair. But there is a mass demand to get shut of this government. And people showing that they are motivated and well informed about how to vote to bring that about.
If there truly was a Tory collapse, surely there would be scores more LibDems elected rather than Labour winning Richmond. Some Greens too. But in what gets simplified as a two party choice the pollsters interpret national polls nationally instead of looking at reality.
Compare and contrast the LD vote in a seat we're the ABC choice in vs a seat where its Labour. In one seat we pick up a 5 figure majority, In the other seat we lose our deposit. That is what we can expect in the GE - Labour and LD candidates winning outrageous seats whilst their colleagues elsewhere lose their deposit.
Forget UNS.
All sounds entirely sensible, until you remember how poorly the LDs have performed at national elections since 2010.
Which is where Dave'n'George were smarter than the current team.
If Lib and Lab take potshots at each other (2015 due to coalition fallout, 2019 due to the awfulness of Jez 2.0), Conservatives can do well without too much difficulty.
By being so awful, the 2019-now government has made it clear to the red and yellow teams where they should be aiming their fire. And that's good for the Lib Dems in the 50(?) seats they can put on a decent show in, and good for Labour everywhere else in England.
Damned with faint praise there, much?
Electorally the current Tory team are simply not up to it. Activists locally getting restless. Suspect another bad set of locals would be Rishi's last.
May 24 is much too far into the endgame for a putsch.
I don't think there will be a putsch because the remaining Tories are too bitterly enraged by the other factions to agree on a unity candidate.
But if that changed, why would May 24 be too late? Lets assume the Tories have a catastrophic election night with losses up and down the land showing that the ABC apocalypse is coming and coming hard.
Mrs Brady polishes his little pearl revolver and goes to Number 10 again again. We get an announcement about the rules for the leadership contest, and then swathes of the party declare fealty to Lee Anderson.
By the end of May Anderson is MP and has the summer and the autumn to transform the political narrative. Instead of 30p, the Tories will bribe the electorate with 50p. A maelstrom of campaigning where they try and prove that Starmer will steal your extra 20p. "I always said he was a Kid Starver" said ex Labour member and now Tory PPC for Don Valley BJO.
"Fifty Pee or Fuck Off" is the Tory conference slogan that gets the pundits aghast and the voters enthralled. The Mail publishes a letter proving that there is a woke leftie trans lawyer taking orders directly from Kid Starver who is planning to give your extra 20p to child rapists now being released into an open trans prison to be built IN YOUR TOWN!
Etc etc
Do people not think that May 24 will be when a GE is held? The only thing Sunak has left to his advantage is when he can call an election. If he clings on til the bitter end, a la Brown, he will have no hope of saving anything. I kind of assumed a GE at the same time as the locals - the party will stand or fall locally and nationally all in one go. I can't imagine local governments can afford to run two big election cycles in 6-8 months, and I don't suppose Sunak wants to get whomped in the locals and have a lame duck end of term.
Unless we witness the great Motorist revolution this winter, there will not be a General Election in May 24. Why go early when you will lose, when the alternative is wait out the rest of the year hoping something will turn up?
Their lame duck period is the entirety of the post-Covid period. They have excited the pandemic with no money and no clue what to do. We have had two changes of PM and the only impact has been to leave even less money available to do things with.
Hard to find anything to argue with in OGH's summary. At least for yours truly!
Morning all.
@MikeSmithson keeps taking GE2019 as the benchmark. Whilst this looks right on paper, it's an illusion and for punters it's an error. GE2019 was a one-off 'Get Brexit Done' election to unblock the jam created during the Remainer Parliament. Boris Johnson galvanised the voters against the unelectable trotskyite anti-semitic Jeremy Corbyn with the sole aim of Getting Brexit Done. Hence the December election. In many ways GE2019 was NOT a General Election.
The last proper General Election in the UK was June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament. That's your benchmark.
Bet accordingly.
p.s. I'm personally very glad that Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair.
I think I understand the point you are making - whilst the 2019 election is the status quo, its artificial. Ordinarily the Labour task would be considered politically unlikely - as we all said in the aftermath.
But if we consider the 2019 result to be the aberration, then a revision to the norm can be expected to happen as the start of any new electoral move. There are swathes of red wall seats which endless polls have shows will not just revert to Labour but will deliver them 5 figure majorities.
If we bake that 2017 reversion in, the task facing Starmer is much smaller, and much more attainable. Then we look at the two other political low tides from 2015 likely to come back in:
The absence of unionist MPs in Scotland feels like a situation that can't be sustained - so expect 20-30 seats to switch from the motorhome party. The absence of yellow MPs in rural England is already a tide rushing back in. The focus is always on Labour, but as is clear it is the LibDems who will mop up disaffected sane voters in places where "Sink the Boats" makes people feel sick.
So, we reset the Red Wall. We drain out the SNP flood. We remove the dam from the LibDems. And suddenly a thumping Tory defeat is not just possible, it feels likely. To stay in power they need to preserve all three of these artificial positions. Which politically means they need to be Janus, a task they are spectacularly failing to pull off.
Yes, I think the Tories have snookered themselves. It is hard to see any of those 3 fronts being contained next GE. While Scotland is unique, the other 2 fronts play out across most E and W constituencies. They are sociological rather than geographical waves.
Tory unpopularity with the working age population is astonishing. I doubt there’s been anything like it in the history of two-party politics in this country.
What possible reason is there at the minute for someone who works for a living to support the Tories?
Sunak has made his bed and shown that working people only exist in his eyes to be taxed ever higher to provide welfare for those who don't work. That's something you can understand from Labour, but from the Tories?
The jack boots will be on next and barbed wire being put up to intern unemployed and pensioners. Give it a rest Adolf.
Electorates change. My generation grew up in the shadow of WW2. We saw the bombsites, our parents had hidden away in air raid shelters, our grandparents had been in the services. Standing Alone, whether historically accurate or not, was ingrained into us. Everywhere we looked, from comics to TV, the war was present. It shaped us and all those around us. Of course it did. But as we die off, that way of seeing the world becomes less politically visceral. For my kids, the end of WW2 is as far away as the end of the Boer War was for me. It inevitably affects how they look at the world and the UK’s place in it.
And, every generation is different.
It may be that Generation Alpha (who will succeed Zoomers/Millennials) will find some of their views and obsessions quaint.
Both my children will be in that cohort.
You mean, your children may end up thinking like you?
A dangerous assumption for any parent in any generation, surely. And one prone to lead to disappointment.
Mine certainly don't share most of my views. Though I have equally certainly influenced the way in which they think.
Is there a definitive book on the Normandy landings/campaign?
Beevor's is readable. Can't vouch for accuracy.
I sense, mainly from twitter/X, that there's been a bit of backlash against Beevor. It seems to revolve around him overestimating the prowess of the Heer and sacrifice of the Red Army while downplaying the achievements of our stout Tommies and GIs.
I think he reports atrocities committed by Our Boys, which may have gone down badly. But I am a one book man on this subject so nothing to benchmark against. He is very good on the uncertainty of waiting for a weather window to launch in; I have been on yachts racing to Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue so, to compare great things with small, can relate
Hard to find anything to argue with in OGH's summary. At least for yours truly!
Morning all.
@MikeSmithson keeps taking GE2019 as the benchmark. Whilst this looks right on paper, it's an illusion and for punters it's an error. GE2019 was a one-off 'Get Brexit Done' election to unblock the jam created during the Remainer Parliament. Boris Johnson galvanised the voters against the unelectable trotskyite anti-semitic Jeremy Corbyn with the sole aim of Getting Brexit Done. Hence the December election. In many ways GE2019 was NOT a General Election.
The last proper General Election in the UK was June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament. That's your benchmark.
Bet accordingly.
p.s. I'm personally very glad that Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair.
I think I understand the point you are making - whilst the 2019 election is the status quo, its artificial. Ordinarily the Labour task would be considered politically unlikely - as we all said in the aftermath.
But if we consider the 2019 result to be the aberration, then a revision to the norm can be expected to happen as the start of any new electoral move. There are swathes of red wall seats which endless polls have shows will not just revert to Labour but will deliver them 5 figure majorities.
If we bake that 2017 reversion in, the task facing Starmer is much smaller, and much more attainable. Then we look at the two other political low tides from 2015 likely to come back in:
The absence of unionist MPs in Scotland feels like a situation that can't be sustained - so expect 20-30 seats to switch from the motorhome party. The absence of yellow MPs in rural England is already a tide rushing back in. The focus is always on Labour, but as is clear it is the LibDems who will mop up disaffected sane voters in places where "Sink the Boats" makes people feel sick.
So, we reset the Red Wall. We drain out the SNP flood. We remove the dam from the LibDems. And suddenly a thumping Tory defeat is not just possible, it feels likely. To stay in power they need to preserve all three of these artificial positions. Which politically means they need to be Janus, a task they are spectacularly failing to pull off.
Yes, I think the Tories have snookered themselves. It is hard to see any of those 3 fronts being contained next GE. While Scotland is unique, the other 2 fronts play out across most E and W constituencies. They are sociological rather than geographical waves.
Tory unpopularity with the working age population is astonishing. I doubt there’s been anything like it in the history of two-party politics in this country.
Yes, it is deeply concerning.
The only people they seem to look after (and protect from policy) is the retired and they've dug a hole so deep there I struggle to see how they get out now.
Opposition will do a lot of the work.
Labour, in government, will be unlikely to resist the temptation to try to buy pensioner votes. I think some of the bias of the old to the Tories is in fact a bias of the old to the incumbent government.
Things could change quite rapidly, at least in terms of rhetoric and polling. But would a new Tory government, after a Starmer interregnum, be able to resist the temptation to buy pensioner votes? I have my doubts. (Well, okay, not many doubts, I'm fairly confident that governments of both sides will follow the path of least resistance and genuflect to the pensioner vote.)
OTOH, many pensioners will still vote Tory regardless, so why should SKS bother going all out Tory? Or (as remarked to me yesterday) so cowardly in his approach to Brexit etc. that he might as well be Tory. And ditto with baby starving, Scottish referendum, and so on and so forth.
The Tories have gone so far (as already remarked in the thread) it's probably impossible to rebalance things and make a fairer balance with the people actually doing the work without upsetting the pensioner vote irreparably (for instance, by imposing NI on all, or merging it with income tax, or cutting IHT allowances or converting them to CGT).
My argument is mainly grounded on what happened under the previous Labour government, rather than on hypotheticals about the future.
Under the Labour government of 1997-2010* we saw several moves that increased spending on pensioners. We had the first pension lock, to ensure there wasn't a repeat of low inflation leading to a tiny increase in the state pension. We had various freebies given to pensioners - TV licenses, bus passes, fuel allowances.
The consequence of this was seen in election results. In the 2010 GE the bias of the old to vote Tories was at its lowest since 1992.
Expect to see the same again. I'd be gobsmacked if pensioners were not reassured by Labour budgets, and I'd expect votes to change as they did before.
The attraction of buying the votes of pensioners is that it is really simple. The government only has to keep the money flowing. Sorting out the problems for younger voters, such as the housing crisis, might sound simple - just build more houses! - but runs into all sorts of other issues - Who will build them? Will there be enough building materials at a low enough price? Where? - which make them practically more difficult, and even in a best case scenario will take years to deliver tangible results.
* Actually, probably more correctly in the period 2001-2010. I'd have to dig out the details of when the various reforms were made. But the very small pension increase happened in the first Parliament, 1997-2001, and Labour consequently fell further behind with the pensioner vote at the 2001 GE. They learnt their lesson then and I don't think they will be looking for a refresher.
House building needs to be increased.
All of the problem you list are fixable over time.
When it was proposed to hire x,000 more police officers, some said it was actually impossible.
The current block is the hoarding of planning permission. Which is logical for various actors.
Imagine you are a big developer. You have the permission to build an estate of 5,000 homes. If you try and build 5,000 homes now
1) the local house prices will crash 2) the local council will find the strain on infrastructure intolerable 3) the NIMBYs will riot 4) finding the builders may be a problem
So, instead, you build 250 a year. That makes the council mellow. The NIMBYs will get bored with the inevitable. The house prices won’t crash. The building companies and suppliers you contract with will love a steady 20 years of work….
"Despite the government’s focus on levelling up, the NIESR found wage growth had been fastest in London. It predicted real wage growth of 7% in the capital between the end of 2019 and 2024, compared with a fall of 5% in the West Midlands."
Indeed. Minimum wage is no longer the maximum wage in many industries, especially so in London. Thanks to Brexit, unskilled employees have seen large rises in their pay, especially those who changed jobs during the pandemic.
And yet...
In its quarterly update on the state of the economy, the NIESR said the poorest tenth of the population had been especially hard hit by Britain’s cost of living crisis and would need an income boost of £4,000 a year to have the same living standards they enjoyed in the year before Covid-19 arrived.
The poorest households – hit by weak wage growth, higher debt, the need to devote more of their budgets to expensive energy, food and housing costs; and with few if any savings – would be 17% worse off by the end of 2024 than they were five years earlier. The richest households would be 5% worse off.
And yet ...
Its almost as if two distinct things have happened. The pandemic, expensive food, energy etc is because of what has happened across the globe and would have happened with or without Brexit. That the cost of gas has shot up globally, and the UK relies upon gas, is not a Brexit issue.
The fact that the cost of housing is so high is a British issue, but not a Brexit issue. Build more houses to solve that one.
You thick clown , we produce lots of gas that we sell cheap and due to incompetence have no storage and so buy it back at high prices. How do you manage to dress yourself in the morning.
The Conservatives and Labour will always be the two main parties... until they are not.
Time was when: ...every boy and every gal That’s born into the world alive Is either a little Liberal Or else a little Conservative!
Neither party has a divine right to compete for power; it's not inconceivable that the LDs replace the Tories permanently (until the next change).
The oddness of the current polling is that we keep getting mad predictions of Labour winning everything everywhere. Supposedly that Channel 4 Poll last night had Labour taking Richmond off Sunak.
The electorate have shown they are well up for tactical voting. There is no mass desire for Sunak in the way there was for Blair. But there is a mass demand to get shut of this government. And people showing that they are motivated and well informed about how to vote to bring that about.
If there truly was a Tory collapse, surely there would be scores more LibDems elected rather than Labour winning Richmond. Some Greens too. But in what gets simplified as a two party choice the pollsters interpret national polls nationally instead of looking at reality.
Compare and contrast the LD vote in a seat we're the ABC choice in vs a seat where its Labour. In one seat we pick up a 5 figure majority, In the other seat we lose our deposit. That is what we can expect in the GE - Labour and LD candidates winning outrageous seats whilst their colleagues elsewhere lose their deposit.
Forget UNS.
All sounds entirely sensible, until you remember how poorly the LDs have performed at national elections since 2010.
Which is where Dave'n'George were smarter than the current team.
If Lib and Lab take potshots at each other (2015 due to coalition fallout, 2019 due to the awfulness of Jez 2.0), Conservatives can do well without too much difficulty.
By being so awful, the 2019-now government has made it clear to the red and yellow teams where they should be aiming their fire. And that's good for the Lib Dems in the 50(?) seats they can put on a decent show in, and good for Labour everywhere else in England.
Damned with faint praise there, much?
Electorally the current Tory team are simply not up to it. Activists locally getting restless. Suspect another bad set of locals would be Rishi's last.
May 24 is much too far into the endgame for a putsch.
I don't think there will be a putsch because the remaining Tories are too bitterly enraged by the other factions to agree on a unity candidate.
But if that changed, why would May 24 be too late? Lets assume the Tories have a catastrophic election night with losses up and down the land showing that the ABC apocalypse is coming and coming hard.
Mrs Brady polishes his little pearl revolver and goes to Number 10 again again. We get an announcement about the rules for the leadership contest, and then swathes of the party declare fealty to Lee Anderson.
By the end of May Anderson is MP and has the summer and the autumn to transform the political narrative. Instead of 30p, the Tories will bribe the electorate with 50p. A maelstrom of campaigning where they try and prove that Starmer will steal your extra 20p. "I always said he was a Kid Starver" said ex Labour member and now Tory PPC for Don Valley BJO.
"Fifty Pee or Fuck Off" is the Tory conference slogan that gets the pundits aghast and the voters enthralled. The Mail publishes a letter proving that there is a woke leftie trans lawyer taking orders directly from Kid Starver who is planning to give your extra 20p to child rapists now being released into an open trans prison to be built IN YOUR TOWN!
Etc etc
Do people not think that May 24 will be when a GE is held? The only thing Sunak has left to his advantage is when he can call an election. If he clings on til the bitter end, a la Brown, he will have no hope of saving anything. I kind of assumed a GE at the same time as the locals - the party will stand or fall locally and nationally all in one go. I can't imagine local governments can afford to run two big election cycles in 6-8 months, and I don't suppose Sunak wants to get whomped in the locals and have a lame duck end of term.
Unless we witness the great Motorist revolution this winter, there will not be a General Election in May 24. Why go early when you will lose, when the alternative is wait out the rest of the year hoping something will turn up?
Their lame duck period is the entirety of the post-Covid period. They have excited the pandemic with no money and no clue what to do. We have had two changes of PM and the only impact has been to leave even less money available to do things with.
Good morning
Agreed and I think Sunak quite likes being PM.
October 24 gives him 2 years in the role then he can pursue other interests without the toxicity of Johnson and Truss, who are responsible for the trashing of the conservative brand
Hard to find anything to argue with in OGH's summary. At least for yours truly!
Morning all.
@MikeSmithson keeps taking GE2019 as the benchmark. Whilst this looks right on paper, it's an illusion and for punters it's an error. GE2019 was a one-off 'Get Brexit Done' election to unblock the jam created during the Remainer Parliament. Boris Johnson galvanised the voters against the unelectable trotskyite anti-semitic Jeremy Corbyn with the sole aim of Getting Brexit Done. Hence the December election. In many ways GE2019 was NOT a General Election.
The last proper General Election in the UK was June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament. That's your benchmark.
Bet accordingly.
p.s. I'm personally very glad that Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair.
I think I understand the point you are making - whilst the 2019 election is the status quo, its artificial. Ordinarily the Labour task would be considered politically unlikely - as we all said in the aftermath.
But if we consider the 2019 result to be the aberration, then a revision to the norm can be expected to happen as the start of any new electoral move. There are swathes of red wall seats which endless polls have shows will not just revert to Labour but will deliver them 5 figure majorities.
If we bake that 2017 reversion in, the task facing Starmer is much smaller, and much more attainable. Then we look at the two other political low tides from 2015 likely to come back in:
The absence of unionist MPs in Scotland feels like a situation that can't be sustained - so expect 20-30 seats to switch from the motorhome party. The absence of yellow MPs in rural England is already a tide rushing back in. The focus is always on Labour, but as is clear it is the LibDems who will mop up disaffected sane voters in places where "Sink the Boats" makes people feel sick.
So, we reset the Red Wall. We drain out the SNP flood. We remove the dam from the LibDems. And suddenly a thumping Tory defeat is not just possible, it feels likely. To stay in power they need to preserve all three of these artificial positions. Which politically means they need to be Janus, a task they are spectacularly failing to pull off.
Yes, I think the Tories have snookered themselves. It is hard to see any of those 3 fronts being contained next GE. While Scotland is unique, the other 2 fronts play out across most E and W constituencies. They are sociological rather than geographical waves.
Tory unpopularity with the working age population is astonishing. I doubt there’s been anything like it in the history of two-party politics in this country.
Yes, it is deeply concerning.
The only people they seem to look after (and protect from policy) is the retired and they've dug a hole so deep there I struggle to see how they get out now.
Pray tell how they protect the retired. Raising the pittance of the state pension , the worst in the developed world by a country mile is hardly looking after them, it is less than bare minimum.
Yes, this is something I don't get. "Rich pensioners" isn't all pensioners. Its the minority who have been able to look after themselves. Like all other welfare support our pensions are truly dire. We are an expensive country to live in but pay very low pensions or maternity or unemployment compared to countries like Denmark or Spain.
The Conservatives and Labour will always be the two main parties... until they are not.
Time was when: ...every boy and every gal That’s born into the world alive Is either a little Liberal Or else a little Conservative!
Neither party has a divine right to compete for power; it's not inconceivable that the LDs replace the Tories permanently (until the next change).
The oddness of the current polling is that we keep getting mad predictions of Labour winning everything everywhere. Supposedly that Channel 4 Poll last night had Labour taking Richmond off Sunak.
The electorate have shown they are well up for tactical voting. There is no mass desire for Sunak in the way there was for Blair. But there is a mass demand to get shut of this government. And people showing that they are motivated and well informed about how to vote to bring that about.
If there truly was a Tory collapse, surely there would be scores more LibDems elected rather than Labour winning Richmond. Some Greens too. But in what gets simplified as a two party choice the pollsters interpret national polls nationally instead of looking at reality.
Compare and contrast the LD vote in a seat we're the ABC choice in vs a seat where its Labour. In one seat we pick up a 5 figure majority, In the other seat we lose our deposit. That is what we can expect in the GE - Labour and LD candidates winning outrageous seats whilst their colleagues elsewhere lose their deposit.
Forget UNS.
All sounds entirely sensible, until you remember how poorly the LDs have performed at national elections since 2010.
Which is where Dave'n'George were smarter than the current team.
If Lib and Lab take potshots at each other (2015 due to coalition fallout, 2019 due to the awfulness of Jez 2.0), Conservatives can do well without too much difficulty.
By being so awful, the 2019-now government has made it clear to the red and yellow teams where they should be aiming their fire. And that's good for the Lib Dems in the 50(?) seats they can put on a decent show in, and good for Labour everywhere else in England.
Damned with faint praise there, much?
Electorally the current Tory team are simply not up to it. Activists locally getting restless. Suspect another bad set of locals would be Rishi's last.
Blimey, that would make six Tory PMs since 2016... Hardly screams strong and stable. You want to give the people who chose Truss another pop at selecting the leader of a UN P5 and G7 economy? Remind me of the definition of insanity, again.
So its better to have the person who lost to Truss?
It's not about strong and stable; it's about scraping the barnacles off the boat preparing the party for an election.
For the 2019 voting Tory brand AND most of the recent activist base, the biggest barnacles are in No 10 and No 11.
But to an outsider, the recent activist base seems a little…fringe, to put it politely. Not sure the party will fare well by playing to them.
Nope, the recent activist base is the most diverse (in every respect) that I can remember since 2005. It is also the largest in living memory.
It is a shame that the statist centrism of Sunak has alienated such a broad coalition.
Intriguing, if accurate (not doubting your experience, I just haven’t heard that elsewhere). Could that broad coalition be the basis for rebuilding in opposition? What, broadly, does it stand for?
Broadest age range, class range, ideology range.
In my area (blue wall), far more fiscally dry than the government, and socially liberal (the socially illiberal are generally not 'joiners' in my experience). Dislike the big state.
Gosh, sounds like a small c Conservative Party! I can definitely see the gap for such a grouping to thrive once the current ideological bankruptcy is swept away.
The challenge, as far as I can see it, is that whilst people don’t like a big state, they often like the effects of a big state (or rather, dislike the effects of reducing the big state). The recent announcement about barn conversions and its impact on national parks springs to mind: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/aug/07/proposals-to-ease-planning-laws-in-englands-national-parks-condemned?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other. As soon as you advocate for the details of a smaller state you are open to attack as to the impact of removing state bureaucracy. Not sure how you answer that.
A very good point.
The problem is 'vested interest groups' are far given far too much voice because the left wing establishment like perpetuating the bureaucracy and hate the Toooooories.
The biggest failure of our 13 years is not changing this by gutting state funding of quangos and replacing leadership with those who are more like minded.
The biggest vested interest groups in UK politics and economy, by far, are property owners and the retired, with a massive overlap between them as well. Yes they have too much influence but there is nothing left wing about it.
Electorates change. My generation grew up in the shadow of WW2. We saw the bombsites, our parents had hidden away in air raid shelters, our grandparents had been in the services. Standing Alone, whether historically accurate or not, was ingrained into us. Everywhere we looked, from comics to TV, the war was present. It shaped us and all those around us. Of course it did. But as we die off, that way of seeing the world becomes less politically visceral. For my kids, the end of WW2 is as far away as the end of the Boer War was for me. It inevitably affects how they look at the world and the UK’s place in it.
And, every generation is different.
It may be that Generation Alpha (who will succeed Zoomers/Millennials) will find some of their views and obsessions quaint.
Both my children will be in that cohort.
"There is nothing new under the sun".
I am getting to an age where I already find the view of some Alphas, Millenials and Zoomers quaint. They have forgotten things that used to be radical, so it is radical again.
You remember those pictorial stories that used to go round on a drum? Such is history
Hard to find anything to argue with in OGH's summary. At least for yours truly!
Morning all.
@MikeSmithson keeps taking GE2019 as the benchmark. Whilst this looks right on paper, it's an illusion and for punters it's an error. GE2019 was a one-off 'Get Brexit Done' election to unblock the jam created during the Remainer Parliament. Boris Johnson galvanised the voters against the unelectable trotskyite anti-semitic Jeremy Corbyn with the sole aim of Getting Brexit Done. Hence the December election. In many ways GE2019 was NOT a General Election.
The last proper General Election in the UK was June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament. That's your benchmark.
Bet accordingly.
p.s. I'm personally very glad that Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair.
I think I understand the point you are making - whilst the 2019 election is the status quo, its artificial. Ordinarily the Labour task would be considered politically unlikely - as we all said in the aftermath.
But if we consider the 2019 result to be the aberration, then a revision to the norm can be expected to happen as the start of any new electoral move. There are swathes of red wall seats which endless polls have shows will not just revert to Labour but will deliver them 5 figure majorities.
If we bake that 2017 reversion in, the task facing Starmer is much smaller, and much more attainable. Then we look at the two other political low tides from 2015 likely to come back in:
The absence of unionist MPs in Scotland feels like a situation that can't be sustained - so expect 20-30 seats to switch from the motorhome party. The absence of yellow MPs in rural England is already a tide rushing back in. The focus is always on Labour, but as is clear it is the LibDems who will mop up disaffected sane voters in places where "Sink the Boats" makes people feel sick.
So, we reset the Red Wall. We drain out the SNP flood. We remove the dam from the LibDems. And suddenly a thumping Tory defeat is not just possible, it feels likely. To stay in power they need to preserve all three of these artificial positions. Which politically means they need to be Janus, a task they are spectacularly failing to pull off.
Yes, I think the Tories have snookered themselves. It is hard to see any of those 3 fronts being contained next GE. While Scotland is unique, the other 2 fronts play out across most E and W constituencies. They are sociological rather than geographical waves.
I get the objection. "Labour can't win that many seats". And from a standing start that would be true. But as I pointed out: 1. Red Wall Reversion to lifetime voting habits. Scores of seats flip blue to red - 2 points for each 2. Scottish independence tide reverts now they realise Bully's Star Prize was a speedboat, and they live in Kilmarnock, and besides which the party have nicked the speedboat. 20-30 seats flip orange to red - 2 points for each 3. Blue wall revulsion to "sink the boats" tendencies. Another 20-30 seats to flip blue to yellow - 1 point each as on paper the LDs would be in opposition to Labour, but we know in reality every party bar the DUP are ABC
And that is just the reversion phase of the election. Then we go after the seats not involved in these three tidal movements, where we're not just resetting the 2017 and 2015 tides but pushing Red and Blue into places not won in a while. With a government this unpopular and unhinged, projections show all kinds of results are doable. Whilst I dismiss some of the more excitable predictions, you can see how it is achievable.
Achievable. Not guaranteed.
Not au fait with Scottish Politics for sure , SNP does not equal Independence support. It si still at teh 50% mark despite their besyt efforts. People may give SNP a bloody nose but Independence is not going away.
"Despite the government’s focus on levelling up, the NIESR found wage growth had been fastest in London. It predicted real wage growth of 7% in the capital between the end of 2019 and 2024, compared with a fall of 5% in the West Midlands."
Indeed. Minimum wage is no longer the maximum wage in many industries, especially so in London. Thanks to Brexit, unskilled employees have seen large rises in their pay, especially those who changed jobs during the pandemic.
And yet...
In its quarterly update on the state of the economy, the NIESR said the poorest tenth of the population had been especially hard hit by Britain’s cost of living crisis and would need an income boost of £4,000 a year to have the same living standards they enjoyed in the year before Covid-19 arrived.
The poorest households – hit by weak wage growth, higher debt, the need to devote more of their budgets to expensive energy, food and housing costs; and with few if any savings – would be 17% worse off by the end of 2024 than they were five years earlier. The richest households would be 5% worse off.
And yet ...
Its almost as if two distinct things have happened. The pandemic, expensive food, energy etc is because of what has happened across the globe and would have happened with or without Brexit. That the cost of gas has shot up globally, and the UK relies upon gas, is not a Brexit issue.
The fact that the cost of housing is so high is a British issue, but not a Brexit issue. Build more houses to solve that one.
The single largest Brexit issue is that our government has spent the last decade concentrating on little else.
There are precious few benefits, significant ongoing costs, and a large majority of the electorate wish it had never happened.
Would we really be better off if Rees Mogg, Williamson, Truss, Patel, Bozo, Raab, Kwarteng etc had set their "talents" onto improving the NHS or education or the economy instead of Brexit?
I'd say the biggest costs of Brexit are societal division and a decline in the calibre of politicians and political debate.
Without Brexit few if any of them would have been in government.
Which is the point. They are a malign symptom of the enormous Brexit distraction.
Its quite possible, indeed probable, that many of them would have been in government without Brexit.
Almost all of them were part of the Government under Cameron pre-referendum and not backbenchers. Only Rees Mogg and Kwarteng from memory are the exceptions - and Kwarteng was considered a "rising star" pre-referendum.
If you think Brexit was a distraction, then surely you'd want to put it behind us by moving on from arguments over Europe? Doing a hokey-cokey rejoin campaign would be just as much if not more of a distraction than Brexit was.
The Conservatives and Labour will always be the two main parties... until they are not.
Time was when: ...every boy and every gal That’s born into the world alive Is either a little Liberal Or else a little Conservative!
Neither party has a divine right to compete for power; it's not inconceivable that the LDs replace the Tories permanently (until the next change).
The oddness of the current polling is that we keep getting mad predictions of Labour winning everything everywhere. Supposedly that Channel 4 Poll last night had Labour taking Richmond off Sunak.
The electorate have shown they are well up for tactical voting. There is no mass desire for Sunak in the way there was for Blair. But there is a mass demand to get shut of this government. And people showing that they are motivated and well informed about how to vote to bring that about.
If there truly was a Tory collapse, surely there would be scores more LibDems elected rather than Labour winning Richmond. Some Greens too. But in what gets simplified as a two party choice the pollsters interpret national polls nationally instead of looking at reality.
Compare and contrast the LD vote in a seat we're the ABC choice in vs a seat where its Labour. In one seat we pick up a 5 figure majority, In the other seat we lose our deposit. That is what we can expect in the GE - Labour and LD candidates winning outrageous seats whilst their colleagues elsewhere lose their deposit.
Forget UNS.
All sounds entirely sensible, until you remember how poorly the LDs have performed at national elections since 2010.
Which is where Dave'n'George were smarter than the current team.
If Lib and Lab take potshots at each other (2015 due to coalition fallout, 2019 due to the awfulness of Jez 2.0), Conservatives can do well without too much difficulty.
By being so awful, the 2019-now government has made it clear to the red and yellow teams where they should be aiming their fire. And that's good for the Lib Dems in the 50(?) seats they can put on a decent show in, and good for Labour everywhere else in England.
Damned with faint praise there, much?
Electorally the current Tory team are simply not up to it. Activists locally getting restless. Suspect another bad set of locals would be Rishi's last.
May 24 is much too far into the endgame for a putsch.
I don't think there will be a putsch because the remaining Tories are too bitterly enraged by the other factions to agree on a unity candidate.
But if that changed, why would May 24 be too late? Lets assume the Tories have a catastrophic election night with losses up and down the land showing that the ABC apocalypse is coming and coming hard.
Mrs Brady polishes his little pearl revolver and goes to Number 10 again again. We get an announcement about the rules for the leadership contest, and then swathes of the party declare fealty to Lee Anderson.
By the end of May Anderson is MP and has the summer and the autumn to transform the political narrative. Instead of 30p, the Tories will bribe the electorate with 50p. A maelstrom of campaigning where they try and prove that Starmer will steal your extra 20p. "I always said he was a Kid Starver" said ex Labour member and now Tory PPC for Don Valley BJO.
"Fifty Pee or Fuck Off" is the Tory conference slogan that gets the pundits aghast and the voters enthralled. The Mail publishes a letter proving that there is a woke leftie trans lawyer taking orders directly from Kid Starver who is planning to give your extra 20p to child rapists now being released into an open trans prison to be built IN YOUR TOWN!
Etc etc
Do people not think that May 24 will be when a GE is held? The only thing Sunak has left to his advantage is when he can call an election. If he clings on til the bitter end, a la Brown, he will have no hope of saving anything. I kind of assumed a GE at the same time as the locals - the party will stand or fall locally and nationally all in one go. I can't imagine local governments can afford to run two big election cycles in 6-8 months, and I don't suppose Sunak wants to get whomped in the locals and have a lame duck end of term.
Unless we witness the great Motorist revolution this winter, there will not be a General Election in May 24. Why go early when you will lose, when the alternative is wait out the rest of the year hoping something will turn up?
Their lame duck period is the entirety of the post-Covid period. They have excited the pandemic with no money and no clue what to do. We have had two changes of PM and the only impact has been to leave even less money available to do things with.
Good morning
Agreed and I think Sunak quite likes being PM.
October 24 gives him 2 years in the role then he can pursue other interests without the toxicity of Johnson and Truss, who are responsible for the trashing of the conservative brand
Morning Big_G and also Rochdale.
I completely agree. October '24 looks a good bet.
I don't agree with Mike about the likelihood of him leaving it until January '25, for all sort of reasons including the terrible 'optics' it creates of clinging to the last vestiges of power.
The Conservatives and Labour will always be the two main parties... until they are not.
Time was when: ...every boy and every gal That’s born into the world alive Is either a little Liberal Or else a little Conservative!
Neither party has a divine right to compete for power; it's not inconceivable that the LDs replace the Tories permanently (until the next change).
The oddness of the current polling is that we keep getting mad predictions of Labour winning everything everywhere. Supposedly that Channel 4 Poll last night had Labour taking Richmond off Sunak.
The electorate have shown they are well up for tactical voting. There is no mass desire for Sunak in the way there was for Blair. But there is a mass demand to get shut of this government. And people showing that they are motivated and well informed about how to vote to bring that about.
If there truly was a Tory collapse, surely there would be scores more LibDems elected rather than Labour winning Richmond. Some Greens too. But in what gets simplified as a two party choice the pollsters interpret national polls nationally instead of looking at reality.
Compare and contrast the LD vote in a seat we're the ABC choice in vs a seat where its Labour. In one seat we pick up a 5 figure majority, In the other seat we lose our deposit. That is what we can expect in the GE - Labour and LD candidates winning outrageous seats whilst their colleagues elsewhere lose their deposit.
Forget UNS.
All sounds entirely sensible, until you remember how poorly the LDs have performed at national elections since 2010.
Which is where Dave'n'George were smarter than the current team.
If Lib and Lab take potshots at each other (2015 due to coalition fallout, 2019 due to the awfulness of Jez 2.0), Conservatives can do well without too much difficulty.
By being so awful, the 2019-now government has made it clear to the red and yellow teams where they should be aiming their fire. And that's good for the Lib Dems in the 50(?) seats they can put on a decent show in, and good for Labour everywhere else in England.
Damned with faint praise there, much?
Electorally the current Tory team are simply not up to it. Activists locally getting restless. Suspect another bad set of locals would be Rishi's last.
Blimey, that would make six Tory PMs since 2016... Hardly screams strong and stable. You want to give the people who chose Truss another pop at selecting the leader of a UN P5 and G7 economy? Remind me of the definition of insanity, again.
So its better to have the person who lost to Truss?
It's not about strong and stable; it's about scraping the barnacles off the boat preparing the party for an election.
For the 2019 voting Tory brand AND most of the recent activist base, the biggest barnacles are in No 10 and No 11.
But to an outsider, the recent activist base seems a little…fringe, to put it politely. Not sure the party will fare well by playing to them.
Nope, the recent activist base is the most diverse (in every respect) that I can remember since 2005. It is also the largest in living memory.
It is a shame that the statist centrism of Sunak has alienated such a broad coalition.
Intriguing, if accurate (not doubting your experience, I just haven’t heard that elsewhere). Could that broad coalition be the basis for rebuilding in opposition? What, broadly, does it stand for?
Broadest age range, class range, ideology range.
In my area (blue wall), far more fiscally dry than the government, and socially liberal (the socially illiberal are generally not 'joiners' in my experience). Dislike the big state.
Gosh, sounds like a small c Conservative Party! I can definitely see the gap for such a grouping to thrive once the current ideological bankruptcy is swept away.
The challenge, as far as I can see it, is that whilst people don’t like a big state, they often like the effects of a big state (or rather, dislike the effects of reducing the big state). The recent announcement about barn conversions and its impact on national parks springs to mind: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/aug/07/proposals-to-ease-planning-laws-in-englands-national-parks-condemned?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other. As soon as you advocate for the details of a smaller state you are open to attack as to the impact of removing state bureaucracy. Not sure how you answer that.
A very good point.
The problem is 'vested interest groups' are far given far too much voice because the left wing establishment like perpetuating the bureaucracy and hate the Toooooories.
The biggest failure of our 13 years is not changing this by gutting state funding of quangos and replacing leadership with those who are more like minded.
I don’t know. I can see that gutting institutions in the way that the BBC and the NHS has been gutted would suit your short-term purpose. But I don’t think it would bring the public with you.
I think most people genuinely value our national parks and will baulk at them being weakened. And I think that’s a microcosm of a larger argument; much (though by no means all) of the bureaucracy that exists serves a purpose. Remove the bureaucracy and you remove the protections against, inter alia, rapacious capitalism, which seems particularly morally defunct at present.
And hasn’t a ‘bonfire of the quangos’ already been tried?
I guess what I’m trying to say is that I agree in principle with the smaller state, I just think that the Tories’ attempts to reduce the state over the past 13 years have (a) largely failed and (b) felt more like stuffing the public in favour of private profit.
I wonder if there is a niche for a small state Labour Party? Sounds bonkers, I know, but it might be that the Labour Party could find ways to reduce the size of the state whilst protecting against private profiteering.
There are very few working people who will support the Tories on the basis of "hey, if my parents peg it then I'll get an inheritance". About HYUFD and that's it.
I do think the tory reliance on the aged gets overstated.
You can see from the tory grotbags on here that they still have some, limited, appeal beyond the type of old people who get cheated out of their life savings by Indian tech support scammers. In this threadbare electoral coalition there are cod libertarians, social conservatives, monotone trans-obsessives, continuity leavers, lachrymose nostalgics and simple minded xenophobes.
The Conservatives and Labour will always be the two main parties... until they are not.
Time was when: ...every boy and every gal That’s born into the world alive Is either a little Liberal Or else a little Conservative!
Neither party has a divine right to compete for power; it's not inconceivable that the LDs replace the Tories permanently (until the next change).
The oddness of the current polling is that we keep getting mad predictions of Labour winning everything everywhere. Supposedly that Channel 4 Poll last night had Labour taking Richmond off Sunak.
The electorate have shown they are well up for tactical voting. There is no mass desire for Sunak in the way there was for Blair. But there is a mass demand to get shut of this government. And people showing that they are motivated and well informed about how to vote to bring that about.
If there truly was a Tory collapse, surely there would be scores more LibDems elected rather than Labour winning Richmond. Some Greens too. But in what gets simplified as a two party choice the pollsters interpret national polls nationally instead of looking at reality.
Compare and contrast the LD vote in a seat we're the ABC choice in vs a seat where its Labour. In one seat we pick up a 5 figure majority, In the other seat we lose our deposit. That is what we can expect in the GE - Labour and LD candidates winning outrageous seats whilst their colleagues elsewhere lose their deposit.
Forget UNS.
All sounds entirely sensible, until you remember how poorly the LDs have performed at national elections since 2010.
Which is where Dave'n'George were smarter than the current team.
If Lib and Lab take potshots at each other (2015 due to coalition fallout, 2019 due to the awfulness of Jez 2.0), Conservatives can do well without too much difficulty.
By being so awful, the 2019-now government has made it clear to the red and yellow teams where they should be aiming their fire. And that's good for the Lib Dems in the 50(?) seats they can put on a decent show in, and good for Labour everywhere else in England.
Damned with faint praise there, much?
Electorally the current Tory team are simply not up to it. Activists locally getting restless. Suspect another bad set of locals would be Rishi's last.
May 24 is much too far into the endgame for a putsch.
If May 2024 shows Tory MPs down to the 91st safest (as per recent polling) losing their seats, 24 hours would be time enough.
It takes 24 seconds for a PM to call a General Election.
You know that the constitutional advice on a PM requesting a dissolution in the event of his imminent ousting is that it won't be accepted, right?
No, I didn't know that. I do know the Lascelles convention if that is what you mean, which states that refusal is an OPTION iff
1. the existing Parliament is still "vital, viable, and capable of doing its job", 2. a general election would be "detrimental to the national economy", and 3. the sovereign could "rely on finding another prime minister who could govern for a reasonable period with a working majority in the House of Commons".
1 and 2 LOL, to satisfy 3 you're going to have to have pre-coronated someone again.
1 is met, there is a majority Government.
2 is no longer part of the Convention AFAIK.
3 no need for a pre-coronation, the convention is that governments can undergo leadership campaigns while in office.
If the PM were ousted and a majority of the Commons were willing to have the Deputy PM (currently Oliver Dowden) or someone else as interim PM until the end of the leadership campaign, then Lascelles condition 3 would be met too.
On 1, it doesn't say "there is a majority" it says something different
I don't see what mechanism there is for amendment of the principles short of a further letter from Senex. What are you referring to?
The problem is, R granting the request is the default. You are suggesting he be asked to depart from precedent and go out of his way to further the interests of one faction in one political party. Not going to happen.
"Every police officer in Northern Ireland has data compromised in 'monumental' breach due to human error
The PSNI Assistant Chief Constable admitted the breach was made in "human error" and apologised to colleagues whose data was made public for two and a half to three hours."
Amazingly, some dangerous idiots still want the government to have yet more of our intimate personal data, even though it's obvious they can't keep it safe. Last year Labour were advocating ID cards to control illegal immigration.
... I would regard id cards as a sensible and proportionate measure...
UK 2020s politics is a long stream of illiberal measures designed to burden law-abiding citizens with whatever the fashionable nostrums of the day are. ID cards is a thing that keeps popping up, and it gets knocked down every time.
Not very effectively knocked down then. It's about 1% as scary to me as the surveillance by facial/numberplate recognition/cell phone which goes on 24/7 so if it has any practical value let's do it.
Again, coercing the individual. The question is not whether it is a good idea, but whether it is moral to fine/jail somebody for refusing to carry one. That would be state overkill.
When I lived in Switzerland i was legally obliged to carry my ID card/foreigner permit (carte des etrangers) at all times and if it was requested by the police or an official and I didn’t have it then I was liable to a fine. There was not one second where I felt that it was oppression by the state or an intrusion into my civil liberties.
In fact it was actually great to have one as with it so many activities were quicker - opening a bank account, collecting a parcel, registering with a gov department re tax or similar - because it was an official compulsory ID card that no functionary would refuse to accept as ID.
Sigh.
For the nth time. The problem isn’t the ID card. The problem isn’t the unique identifying code on it. The problem isn’t even the potential use of that unique code as a key on databases.
The problem is that every single time ID cards have been proposed (and he time that they were, briefly, actually implemented), they come with an attempt to link all our personal information together. And link it to biometric data - finger prints, face recognition. etc. and the make it accessible to everyone.
In the last such scheme, they were going to make everything the NHS had on you (for instance) available to council officials investigating fly tipping. When asked why, the response was that segregating data would be difficult and slow things down.
So if your finger print day was stolen, you’d just have to get new finger prints, eh?
It should be noted that personal for Important People (Politicians, senior civil servants, famous people who the government liked) *was* to be segregated. #NU10K
The only saving grace was that such an insane breach of every concept of data security would have gone the way of all such government projects. Collapsed after spending billions. Though in this case it would have got to the data leaking stage
Time to repost this admittedly brilliant analysis from a couple of years ago:
I’ve always said I’m in favour of ID cards, if the following conditions are met:
1) They’re issued for free
2) You don’t have to carry them at all times
3) You can use them chip and pin to access all government services - so they would replace passports and driving licences, not augment them
4) That you had the power to access all information the government holds on you, and amend it where it is wrong
5) That civil servants who access your data are logged, and you can see who they are and why they accessed it
6) That if somebody has accessed your data inappropriately you have the right to take legal action against them, funded by the government.
And numbers 4-6 will not happen while any civil servant breathes air.
Civil Servants are only human, and humans are nosy, so the more information you make available to government officials the more information they will see.
If you think that if you had free access to a super-government database that you wouldn't be looking at your neighbour's income then you are kidding yourself. The best that can be hoped for is that you would have the good sense not to tell anyone that you had done so and keep the information to yourself.
Meanwhile in Estonia, all of those qualifiers apply, and the Estonian X-road (google) decentralizes the stores of data and provides a sentry programme for greater security, so there is no central store of data that can be so compromised.
The benefits in terms of efficiency are truly staggering, especially in health care, but the ability to verify your identity in a secure online environment saves a fortune in things like tax collection and financial transactions too.
Eventually Britain will need to adopt at least some part of these systems (and in the DVLA and the Passport Office it did use advice from Estonia)., the problem is that it involves understanding the issues involved and the UK political system is missing leaders with that kind of understanding.
I’ve actually spoken with civil servants on this issue.
The problem is that they are hard wired to believe in the Big Central Database. Access controls are seen as Impeding Good Government.
So all the briefing papers reflect this.
You would need to fire the top five ranks of the Home Office, en masse.
As an ex civil servant, I only wish that we had a tenth of the power that you attribute to us. We didn't.
And, in reference to an earlier comment of yours, the idea that under a previously-floated ID scheme council workers investigating fly-tipping would have had full access to people's NHS medical records is palpably absurd. They wouldn't.
"Despite the government’s focus on levelling up, the NIESR found wage growth had been fastest in London. It predicted real wage growth of 7% in the capital between the end of 2019 and 2024, compared with a fall of 5% in the West Midlands."
Indeed. Minimum wage is no longer the maximum wage in many industries, especially so in London. Thanks to Brexit, unskilled employees have seen large rises in their pay, especially those who changed jobs during the pandemic.
And yet...
In its quarterly update on the state of the economy, the NIESR said the poorest tenth of the population had been especially hard hit by Britain’s cost of living crisis and would need an income boost of £4,000 a year to have the same living standards they enjoyed in the year before Covid-19 arrived.
The poorest households – hit by weak wage growth, higher debt, the need to devote more of their budgets to expensive energy, food and housing costs; and with few if any savings – would be 17% worse off by the end of 2024 than they were five years earlier. The richest households would be 5% worse off.
And yet ...
Its almost as if two distinct things have happened. The pandemic, expensive food, energy etc is because of what has happened across the globe and would have happened with or without Brexit. That the cost of gas has shot up globally, and the UK relies upon gas, is not a Brexit issue.
The fact that the cost of housing is so high is a British issue, but not a Brexit issue. Build more houses to solve that one.
You thick clown , we produce lots of gas that we sell cheap and due to incompetence have no storage and so buy it back at high prices. How do you manage to dress yourself in the morning.
You're the thick clown.
We are a major net importer of gas.
If we were a net exporter of gas you might have a point, but we're not. We need to import gas, storage or no storage. We don't produce anywhere near enough gas - and the Opposition and the Scottish government it seems want us to produce even less of it.
Hard to find anything to argue with in OGH's summary. At least for yours truly!
Morning all.
@MikeSmithson keeps taking GE2019 as the benchmark. Whilst this looks right on paper, it's an illusion and for punters it's an error. GE2019 was a one-off 'Get Brexit Done' election to unblock the jam created during the Remainer Parliament. Boris Johnson galvanised the voters against the unelectable trotskyite anti-semitic Jeremy Corbyn with the sole aim of Getting Brexit Done. Hence the December election. In many ways GE2019 was NOT a General Election.
The last proper General Election in the UK was June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament. That's your benchmark.
Bet accordingly.
p.s. I'm personally very glad that Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair.
I think I understand the point you are making - whilst the 2019 election is the status quo, its artificial. Ordinarily the Labour task would be considered politically unlikely - as we all said in the aftermath.
But if we consider the 2019 result to be the aberration, then a revision to the norm can be expected to happen as the start of any new electoral move. There are swathes of red wall seats which endless polls have shows will not just revert to Labour but will deliver them 5 figure majorities.
If we bake that 2017 reversion in, the task facing Starmer is much smaller, and much more attainable. Then we look at the two other political low tides from 2015 likely to come back in:
The absence of unionist MPs in Scotland feels like a situation that can't be sustained - so expect 20-30 seats to switch from the motorhome party. The absence of yellow MPs in rural England is already a tide rushing back in. The focus is always on Labour, but as is clear it is the LibDems who will mop up disaffected sane voters in places where "Sink the Boats" makes people feel sick.
So, we reset the Red Wall. We drain out the SNP flood. We remove the dam from the LibDems. And suddenly a thumping Tory defeat is not just possible, it feels likely. To stay in power they need to preserve all three of these artificial positions. Which politically means they need to be Janus, a task they are spectacularly failing to pull off.
Yes, I think the Tories have snookered themselves. It is hard to see any of those 3 fronts being contained next GE. While Scotland is unique, the other 2 fronts play out across most E and W constituencies. They are sociological rather than geographical waves.
Tory unpopularity with the working age population is astonishing. I doubt there’s been anything like it in the history of two-party politics in this country.
What possible reason is there at the minute for someone who works for a living to support the Tories?
Sunak has made his bed and shown that working people only exist in his eyes to be taxed ever higher to provide welfare for those who don't work. That's something you can understand from Labour, but from the Tories?
The jack boots will be on next and barbed wire being put up to intern unemployed and pensioners. Give it a rest Adolf.
Hang on. Barty is an absolutist which often translates into absurdist straw man positions - the rant about 30mph zones a perfect example. But he has a point - the status quo is broken. We *are* paying vast amounts in taxes. Where he descends into the absurdist is the suggestion that the money is going into welfare. When our welfare system grudgingly gives people living poverty assuming it pays anything at all.
We're paying record taxes, true. But its going to spivs, not on services, not on infrastructure, not on welfare. We pay lots and get little. Where does all that money go? Even if you are as high Tory and say "inefficiency" that is literally my point. Inefficiency means money is being wasted. Spent on consultants. Advisers. Middlemen. Spivs...
The problem we have is that whilst "we pay taxes and get little back" is good analysis, nobody wants to go after why that is. And propose a solution because the problem is too big and our politicians too timid.
Your jackboots analogy is one solution. Hungary have done it. France wants to do it. Spain and Germany are toying with it...
The Conservatives and Labour will always be the two main parties... until they are not.
Time was when: ...every boy and every gal That’s born into the world alive Is either a little Liberal Or else a little Conservative!
Neither party has a divine right to compete for power; it's not inconceivable that the LDs replace the Tories permanently (until the next change).
The oddness of the current polling is that we keep getting mad predictions of Labour winning everything everywhere. Supposedly that Channel 4 Poll last night had Labour taking Richmond off Sunak.
The electorate have shown they are well up for tactical voting. There is no mass desire for Sunak in the way there was for Blair. But there is a mass demand to get shut of this government. And people showing that they are motivated and well informed about how to vote to bring that about.
If there truly was a Tory collapse, surely there would be scores more LibDems elected rather than Labour winning Richmond. Some Greens too. But in what gets simplified as a two party choice the pollsters interpret national polls nationally instead of looking at reality.
Compare and contrast the LD vote in a seat we're the ABC choice in vs a seat where its Labour. In one seat we pick up a 5 figure majority, In the other seat we lose our deposit. That is what we can expect in the GE - Labour and LD candidates winning outrageous seats whilst their colleagues elsewhere lose their deposit.
Forget UNS.
All sounds entirely sensible, until you remember how poorly the LDs have performed at national elections since 2010.
Which is where Dave'n'George were smarter than the current team.
If Lib and Lab take potshots at each other (2015 due to coalition fallout, 2019 due to the awfulness of Jez 2.0), Conservatives can do well without too much difficulty.
By being so awful, the 2019-now government has made it clear to the red and yellow teams where they should be aiming their fire. And that's good for the Lib Dems in the 50(?) seats they can put on a decent show in, and good for Labour everywhere else in England.
Damned with faint praise there, much?
Electorally the current Tory team are simply not up to it. Activists locally getting restless. Suspect another bad set of locals would be Rishi's last.
Blimey, that would make six Tory PMs since 2016... Hardly screams strong and stable. You want to give the people who chose Truss another pop at selecting the leader of a UN P5 and G7 economy? Remind me of the definition of insanity, again.
So its better to have the person who lost to Truss?
It's not about strong and stable; it's about scraping the barnacles off the boat preparing the party for an election.
For the 2019 voting Tory brand AND most of the recent activist base, the biggest barnacles are in No 10 and No 11.
But to an outsider, the recent activist base seems a little…fringe, to put it politely. Not sure the party will fare well by playing to them.
Nope, the recent activist base is the most diverse (in every respect) that I can remember since 2005. It is also the largest in living memory.
It is a shame that the statist centrism of Sunak has alienated such a broad coalition.
Intriguing, if accurate (not doubting your experience, I just haven’t heard that elsewhere). Could that broad coalition be the basis for rebuilding in opposition? What, broadly, does it stand for?
Broadest age range, class range, ideology range.
In my area (blue wall), far more fiscally dry than the government, and socially liberal (the socially illiberal are generally not 'joiners' in my experience). Dislike the big state.
Socially liberal? What as in have got comfortable with votes for women?
"Despite the government’s focus on levelling up, the NIESR found wage growth had been fastest in London. It predicted real wage growth of 7% in the capital between the end of 2019 and 2024, compared with a fall of 5% in the West Midlands."
Indeed. Minimum wage is no longer the maximum wage in many industries, especially so in London. Thanks to Brexit, unskilled employees have seen large rises in their pay, especially those who changed jobs during the pandemic.
And yet...
In its quarterly update on the state of the economy, the NIESR said the poorest tenth of the population had been especially hard hit by Britain’s cost of living crisis and would need an income boost of £4,000 a year to have the same living standards they enjoyed in the year before Covid-19 arrived.
The poorest households – hit by weak wage growth, higher debt, the need to devote more of their budgets to expensive energy, food and housing costs; and with few if any savings – would be 17% worse off by the end of 2024 than they were five years earlier. The richest households would be 5% worse off.
And yet ...
Its almost as if two distinct things have happened. The pandemic, expensive food, energy etc is because of what has happened across the globe and would have happened with or without Brexit. That the cost of gas has shot up globally, and the UK relies upon gas, is not a Brexit issue.
The fact that the cost of housing is so high is a British issue, but not a Brexit issue. Build more houses to solve that one.
The single largest Brexit issue is that our government has spent the last decade concentrating on little else.
There are precious few benefits, significant ongoing costs, and a large majority of the electorate wish it had never happened.
Would we really be better off if Rees Mogg, Williamson, Truss, Patel, Bozo, Raab, Kwarteng etc had set their "talents" onto improving the NHS or education or the economy instead of Brexit?
I'd say the biggest costs of Brexit are societal division and a decline in the calibre of politicians and political debate.
Without Brexit few if any of them would have been in government.
Which is the point. They are a malign symptom of the enormous Brexit distraction.
Maybe, but I think that scenario assumes not just no Brexit but also somehow the end of the "EU bad and holding us back" which is how that gang took over the Tory party. More likely would have been a Tory govt with similar personnel still at best two faced if not outright hostile to the EU.
I accept a remain vote would have kept some saner and more qualified Tory MPs in cabinet but think most of the incompetents would still have come through.
There will be fireworks at the Labour Party conference this year! The activist base definitely won’t be approving of the change in stance, even if it’s the sensible thing to do.
I know literally hundreds of Labour activists (do you?). None of them are raising this. There will be a row about PR, since the constituencies and some unions favour it and the leadership doesn't want to be pinned down (on that or anything else). Otherwise I'll be surprised if there are fireworks on anything. The party is boringly focused on winning, in the manner of smokers who have had a bout of lung disease - we wish we could have a puff, but we suppose we'd better not.
I’ll admit that you know a lot more Labour activists than I do
Do you think that the hardcore gender activists will move towards the Greens and LDs, but perhaps vote Lab tactically at the election?
Yes, exactly (though more Green that LD). And "perhaps" is right - some will go BJo and vote Green regardless. Generally the LibLab electorate is pretty much up for tactical voting but the Green vote much less so. The Green and RefUK voting intentions are rather similar in that way - both express near-terminal frustration with the mainstream options, but some will be persuadable.
Not sure how many hardcore gender activists there are, but the same applies to hardcore activists on other fronts. But there's a big chink of activists like me - actually very left wing in some ways, but also pragmatic. We need to win this one and govern cautiously, and we can argue about details in the second term.
Hard to find anything to argue with in OGH's summary. At least for yours truly!
Morning all.
@MikeSmithson keeps taking GE2019 as the benchmark. Whilst this looks right on paper, it's an illusion and for punters it's an error. GE2019 was a one-off 'Get Brexit Done' election to unblock the jam created during the Remainer Parliament. Boris Johnson galvanised the voters against the unelectable trotskyite anti-semitic Jeremy Corbyn with the sole aim of Getting Brexit Done. Hence the December election. In many ways GE2019 was NOT a General Election.
The last proper General Election in the UK was June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament. That's your benchmark.
Bet accordingly.
p.s. I'm personally very glad that Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair.
I think I understand the point you are making - whilst the 2019 election is the status quo, its artificial. Ordinarily the Labour task would be considered politically unlikely - as we all said in the aftermath.
But if we consider the 2019 result to be the aberration, then a revision to the norm can be expected to happen as the start of any new electoral move. There are swathes of red wall seats which endless polls have shows will not just revert to Labour but will deliver them 5 figure majorities.
If we bake that 2017 reversion in, the task facing Starmer is much smaller, and much more attainable. Then we look at the two other political low tides from 2015 likely to come back in:
The absence of unionist MPs in Scotland feels like a situation that can't be sustained - so expect 20-30 seats to switch from the motorhome party. The absence of yellow MPs in rural England is already a tide rushing back in. The focus is always on Labour, but as is clear it is the LibDems who will mop up disaffected sane voters in places where "Sink the Boats" makes people feel sick.
So, we reset the Red Wall. We drain out the SNP flood. We remove the dam from the LibDems. And suddenly a thumping Tory defeat is not just possible, it feels likely. To stay in power they need to preserve all three of these artificial positions. Which politically means they need to be Janus, a task they are spectacularly failing to pull off.
Yes, I think the Tories have snookered themselves. It is hard to see any of those 3 fronts being contained next GE. While Scotland is unique, the other 2 fronts play out across most E and W constituencies. They are sociological rather than geographical waves.
Tory unpopularity with the working age population is astonishing. I doubt there’s been anything like it in the history of two-party politics in this country.
Yes, it is deeply concerning.
The only people they seem to look after (and protect from policy) is the retired and they've dug a hole so deep there I struggle to see how they get out now.
Pray tell how they protect the retired. Raising the pittance of the state pension , the worst in the developed world by a country mile is hardly looking after them, it is less than bare minimum.
Yes, this is something I don't get. "Rich pensioners" isn't all pensioners. Its the minority who have been able to look after themselves. Like all other welfare support our pensions are truly dire. We are an expensive country to live in but pay very low pensions or maternity or unemployment compared to countries like Denmark or Spain.
And yet, try suggesting increasing pension credit faster and state pension more slowly and wait a few seconds for the incoming barrage of arguments that we can't possibly do that......
Hard to find anything to argue with in OGH's summary. At least for yours truly!
Morning all.
@MikeSmithson keeps taking GE2019 as the benchmark. Whilst this looks right on paper, it's an illusion and for punters it's an error. GE2019 was a one-off 'Get Brexit Done' election to unblock the jam created during the Remainer Parliament. Boris Johnson galvanised the voters against the unelectable trotskyite anti-semitic Jeremy Corbyn with the sole aim of Getting Brexit Done. Hence the December election. In many ways GE2019 was NOT a General Election.
The last proper General Election in the UK was June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament. That's your benchmark.
Bet accordingly.
p.s. I'm personally very glad that Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair.
I think I understand the point you are making - whilst the 2019 election is the status quo, its artificial. Ordinarily the Labour task would be considered politically unlikely - as we all said in the aftermath.
But if we consider the 2019 result to be the aberration, then a revision to the norm can be expected to happen as the start of any new electoral move. There are swathes of red wall seats which endless polls have shows will not just revert to Labour but will deliver them 5 figure majorities.
If we bake that 2017 reversion in, the task facing Starmer is much smaller, and much more attainable. Then we look at the two other political low tides from 2015 likely to come back in:
The absence of unionist MPs in Scotland feels like a situation that can't be sustained - so expect 20-30 seats to switch from the motorhome party. The absence of yellow MPs in rural England is already a tide rushing back in. The focus is always on Labour, but as is clear it is the LibDems who will mop up disaffected sane voters in places where "Sink the Boats" makes people feel sick.
So, we reset the Red Wall. We drain out the SNP flood. We remove the dam from the LibDems. And suddenly a thumping Tory defeat is not just possible, it feels likely. To stay in power they need to preserve all three of these artificial positions. Which politically means they need to be Janus, a task they are spectacularly failing to pull off.
Yes, I think the Tories have snookered themselves. It is hard to see any of those 3 fronts being contained next GE. While Scotland is unique, the other 2 fronts play out across most E and W constituencies. They are sociological rather than geographical waves.
I get the objection. "Labour can't win that many seats". And from a standing start that would be true. But as I pointed out: 1. Red Wall Reversion to lifetime voting habits. Scores of seats flip blue to red - 2 points for each 2. Scottish independence tide reverts now they realise Bully's Star Prize was a speedboat, and they live in Kilmarnock, and besides which the party have nicked the speedboat. 20-30 seats flip orange to red - 2 points for each 3. Blue wall revulsion to "sink the boats" tendencies. Another 20-30 seats to flip blue to yellow - 1 point each as on paper the LDs would be in opposition to Labour, but we know in reality every party bar the DUP are ABC
And that is just the reversion phase of the election. Then we go after the seats not involved in these three tidal movements, where we're not just resetting the 2017 and 2015 tides but pushing Red and Blue into places not won in a while. With a government this unpopular and unhinged, projections show all kinds of results are doable. Whilst I dismiss some of the more excitable predictions, you can see how it is achievable.
Achievable. Not guaranteed.
Not au fait with Scottish Politics for sure , SNP does not equal Independence support. It si still at teh 50% mark despite their besyt efforts. People may give SNP a bloody nose but Independence is not going away.
Supporting independence as an ideal and voting for a unionist party is what will happen to a lot of voters. The SNP tide is receding and at Westminster there aren't alternatives.
As long as the UK lurches along in its broken state, independence will remain a direct goal for many - I know that. But politically it is in retreat due to the bungling corruption of the SNP.
The Conservatives and Labour will always be the two main parties... until they are not.
Time was when: ...every boy and every gal That’s born into the world alive Is either a little Liberal Or else a little Conservative!
Neither party has a divine right to compete for power; it's not inconceivable that the LDs replace the Tories permanently (until the next change).
The oddness of the current polling is that we keep getting mad predictions of Labour winning everything everywhere. Supposedly that Channel 4 Poll last night had Labour taking Richmond off Sunak.
The electorate have shown they are well up for tactical voting. There is no mass desire for Sunak in the way there was for Blair. But there is a mass demand to get shut of this government. And people showing that they are motivated and well informed about how to vote to bring that about.
If there truly was a Tory collapse, surely there would be scores more LibDems elected rather than Labour winning Richmond. Some Greens too. But in what gets simplified as a two party choice the pollsters interpret national polls nationally instead of looking at reality.
Compare and contrast the LD vote in a seat we're the ABC choice in vs a seat where its Labour. In one seat we pick up a 5 figure majority, In the other seat we lose our deposit. That is what we can expect in the GE - Labour and LD candidates winning outrageous seats whilst their colleagues elsewhere lose their deposit.
Forget UNS.
All sounds entirely sensible, until you remember how poorly the LDs have performed at national elections since 2010.
Which is where Dave'n'George were smarter than the current team.
If Lib and Lab take potshots at each other (2015 due to coalition fallout, 2019 due to the awfulness of Jez 2.0), Conservatives can do well without too much difficulty.
By being so awful, the 2019-now government has made it clear to the red and yellow teams where they should be aiming their fire. And that's good for the Lib Dems in the 50(?) seats they can put on a decent show in, and good for Labour everywhere else in England.
Damned with faint praise there, much?
Electorally the current Tory team are simply not up to it. Activists locally getting restless. Suspect another bad set of locals would be Rishi's last.
Blimey, that would make six Tory PMs since 2016... Hardly screams strong and stable. You want to give the people who chose Truss another pop at selecting the leader of a UN P5 and G7 economy? Remind me of the definition of insanity, again.
So its better to have the person who lost to Truss?
It's not about strong and stable; it's about scraping the barnacles off the boat preparing the party for an election.
For the 2019 voting Tory brand AND most of the recent activist base, the biggest barnacles are in No 10 and No 11.
But what are you suggesting instead ?
Nobody is going to believe promises of unfunded tax cuts.
And few Conservatives seem to want to boast about full employment and NHS employment increasing by 300k since 2019.
Tackling public sector pension entitlement, and reducing the size of the civil service.
Freeing the country from the interfering 'man from the govt, here to help'.
Which leads to the response of "you've had 13 years to do that".
Now they're traditional conservative/libertarian ideas but how much money would they save and how much bureaucracy would they reduce.
Not a lot of either and nor would they get you many votes.
Because there are many millions of people who don't want less help from the government but instead think the government should be helping them more.
And that includes large parts of the Conservatives oldie voting base.
It saves money, cuts the deficit, and powers growth at the same time.
People need to stand on their own feet. Trying socialism lite usually leads to people wanting full fat socialism, until it then runs out of money and people remember that nothing is free....
Telling people they need to 'stand on their own two feet' isn't easy since the banks were bailed out.
Nor is it helped by sleaze in the executive oligarchy.
Standing on your own two feet doesn't include preferential treatment for being a political donor or mysterious payments and non-jobs to politicians who leave office from dubious foreign organisations.
"Despite the government’s focus on levelling up, the NIESR found wage growth had been fastest in London. It predicted real wage growth of 7% in the capital between the end of 2019 and 2024, compared with a fall of 5% in the West Midlands."
Indeed. Minimum wage is no longer the maximum wage in many industries, especially so in London. Thanks to Brexit, unskilled employees have seen large rises in their pay, especially those who changed jobs during the pandemic.
And yet...
In its quarterly update on the state of the economy, the NIESR said the poorest tenth of the population had been especially hard hit by Britain’s cost of living crisis and would need an income boost of £4,000 a year to have the same living standards they enjoyed in the year before Covid-19 arrived.
The poorest households – hit by weak wage growth, higher debt, the need to devote more of their budgets to expensive energy, food and housing costs; and with few if any savings – would be 17% worse off by the end of 2024 than they were five years earlier. The richest households would be 5% worse off.
And yet ...
Its almost as if two distinct things have happened. The pandemic, expensive food, energy etc is because of what has happened across the globe and would have happened with or without Brexit. That the cost of gas has shot up globally, and the UK relies upon gas, is not a Brexit issue.
The fact that the cost of housing is so high is a British issue, but not a Brexit issue. Build more houses to solve that one.
The single largest Brexit issue is that our government has spent the last decade concentrating on little else.
There are precious few benefits, significant ongoing costs, and a large majority of the electorate wish it had never happened.
Would we really be better off if Rees Mogg, Williamson, Truss, Patel, Bozo, Raab, Kwarteng etc had set their "talents" onto improving the NHS or education or the economy instead of Brexit?
I'd say the biggest costs of Brexit are societal division and a decline in the calibre of politicians and political debate.
Without Brexit few if any of them would have been in government.
Which is the point. They are a malign symptom of the enormous Brexit distraction.
Its quite possible, indeed probable, that many of them would have been in government without Brexit.
Almost all of them were part of the Government under Cameron pre-referendum and not backbenchers. Only Rees Mogg and Kwarteng from memory are the exceptions - and Kwarteng was considered a "rising star" pre-referendum.
If you think Brexit was a distraction, then surely you'd want to put it behind us by moving on from arguments over Europe? Doing a hokey-cokey rejoin campaign would be just as much if not more of a distraction than Brexit was.
Nice try. A look at Cameron's actual cabinet shows that to be fanciful. Osborne; May; Hammond; Gove; Fallon; Crabb; Hunt; Grayling; Greening; McLoughlin; Javid; Villiers; Truss; Clark; Letwin; Mundell; Rudd.
And who said anything about what happens next ? For now, government continues to be distracted by the ongoing and unpopular project.
Hard to find anything to argue with in OGH's summary. At least for yours truly!
Morning all.
@MikeSmithson keeps taking GE2019 as the benchmark. Whilst this looks right on paper, it's an illusion and for punters it's an error. GE2019 was a one-off 'Get Brexit Done' election to unblock the jam created during the Remainer Parliament. Boris Johnson galvanised the voters against the unelectable trotskyite anti-semitic Jeremy Corbyn with the sole aim of Getting Brexit Done. Hence the December election. In many ways GE2019 was NOT a General Election.
The last proper General Election in the UK was June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament. That's your benchmark.
Bet accordingly.
p.s. I'm personally very glad that Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair.
I think I understand the point you are making - whilst the 2019 election is the status quo, its artificial. Ordinarily the Labour task would be considered politically unlikely - as we all said in the aftermath.
But if we consider the 2019 result to be the aberration, then a revision to the norm can be expected to happen as the start of any new electoral move. There are swathes of red wall seats which endless polls have shows will not just revert to Labour but will deliver them 5 figure majorities.
If we bake that 2017 reversion in, the task facing Starmer is much smaller, and much more attainable. Then we look at the two other political low tides from 2015 likely to come back in:
The absence of unionist MPs in Scotland feels like a situation that can't be sustained - so expect 20-30 seats to switch from the motorhome party. The absence of yellow MPs in rural England is already a tide rushing back in. The focus is always on Labour, but as is clear it is the LibDems who will mop up disaffected sane voters in places where "Sink the Boats" makes people feel sick.
So, we reset the Red Wall. We drain out the SNP flood. We remove the dam from the LibDems. And suddenly a thumping Tory defeat is not just possible, it feels likely. To stay in power they need to preserve all three of these artificial positions. Which politically means they need to be Janus, a task they are spectacularly failing to pull off.
Yes, I think the Tories have snookered themselves. It is hard to see any of those 3 fronts being contained next GE. While Scotland is unique, the other 2 fronts play out across most E and W constituencies. They are sociological rather than geographical waves.
Tory unpopularity with the working age population is astonishing. I doubt there’s been anything like it in the history of two-party politics in this country.
What possible reason is there at the minute for someone who works for a living to support the Tories?
Sunak has made his bed and shown that working people only exist in his eyes to be taxed ever higher to provide welfare for those who don't work. That's something you can understand from Labour, but from the Tories?
The jack boots will be on next and barbed wire being put up to intern unemployed and pensioners. Give it a rest Adolf.
Hang on. Barty is an absolutist which often translates into absurdist straw man positions - the rant about 30mph zones a perfect example. But he has a point - the status quo is broken. We *are* paying vast amounts in taxes. Where he descends into the absurdist is the suggestion that the money is going into welfare. When our welfare system grudgingly gives people living poverty assuming it pays anything at all.
We're paying record taxes, true. But its going to spivs, not on services, not on infrastructure, not on welfare. We pay lots and get little. Where does all that money go? Even if you are as high Tory and say "inefficiency" that is literally my point. Inefficiency means money is being wasted. Spent on consultants. Advisers. Middlemen. Spivs...
The problem we have is that whilst "we pay taxes and get little back" is good analysis, nobody wants to go after why that is. And propose a solution because the problem is too big and our politicians too timid.
Your jackboots analogy is one solution. Hungary have done it. France wants to do it. Spain and Germany are toying with it...
The bit in bold: it goes on debt repayments.
We have a shit-ton of debt. We need to reflate the economy to lessen the debt burden over time via inflation. But the anti-inflationary reflexes we built up in the neoliberal era prevent us from doing this. So we have problems.
There will be fireworks at the Labour Party conference this year! The activist base definitely won’t be approving of the change in stance, even if it’s the sensible thing to do.
I know literally hundreds of Labour activists (do you?). None of them are raising this. There will be a row about PR, since the constituencies and some unions favour it and the leadership doesn't want to be pinned down (on that or anything else). Otherwise I'll be surprised if there are fireworks on anything. The party is boringly focused on winning, in the manner of smokers who have had a bout of lung disease - we wish we could have a puff, but we suppose we'd better not.
I’ll admit that you know a lot more Labour activists than I do
Do you think that the hardcore gender activists will move towards the Greens and LDs, but perhaps vote Lab tactically at the election?
Yes, exactly (though more Green that LD). And "perhaps" is right - some will go BJo and vote Green regardless. Generally the LibLab electorate is pretty much up for tactical voting but the Green vote much less so. The Green and RefUK voting intentions are rather similar in that way - both express near-terminal frustration with the mainstream options, but some will be persuadable.
Not sure how many hardcore gender activists there are, but the same applies to hardcore activists on other fronts. But there's a big chink of activists like me - actually very left wing in some ways, but also pragmatic. We need to win this one and govern cautiously, and we can argue about details in the second term.
Outside of "not being the Conservatives" - what is SKS's Labour party offering you as someone who is "actually very left wing in some ways"?
Hard to find anything to argue with in OGH's summary. At least for yours truly!
Morning all.
@MikeSmithson keeps taking GE2019 as the benchmark. Whilst this looks right on paper, it's an illusion and for punters it's an error. GE2019 was a one-off 'Get Brexit Done' election to unblock the jam created during the Remainer Parliament. Boris Johnson galvanised the voters against the unelectable trotskyite anti-semitic Jeremy Corbyn with the sole aim of Getting Brexit Done. Hence the December election. In many ways GE2019 was NOT a General Election.
The last proper General Election in the UK was June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament. That's your benchmark.
Bet accordingly.
p.s. I'm personally very glad that Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair.
I think I understand the point you are making - whilst the 2019 election is the status quo, its artificial. Ordinarily the Labour task would be considered politically unlikely - as we all said in the aftermath.
But if we consider the 2019 result to be the aberration, then a revision to the norm can be expected to happen as the start of any new electoral move. There are swathes of red wall seats which endless polls have shows will not just revert to Labour but will deliver them 5 figure majorities.
If we bake that 2017 reversion in, the task facing Starmer is much smaller, and much more attainable. Then we look at the two other political low tides from 2015 likely to come back in:
The absence of unionist MPs in Scotland feels like a situation that can't be sustained - so expect 20-30 seats to switch from the motorhome party. The absence of yellow MPs in rural England is already a tide rushing back in. The focus is always on Labour, but as is clear it is the LibDems who will mop up disaffected sane voters in places where "Sink the Boats" makes people feel sick.
So, we reset the Red Wall. We drain out the SNP flood. We remove the dam from the LibDems. And suddenly a thumping Tory defeat is not just possible, it feels likely. To stay in power they need to preserve all three of these artificial positions. Which politically means they need to be Janus, a task they are spectacularly failing to pull off.
Yes, I think the Tories have snookered themselves. It is hard to see any of those 3 fronts being contained next GE. While Scotland is unique, the other 2 fronts play out across most E and W constituencies. They are sociological rather than geographical waves.
Tory unpopularity with the working age population is astonishing. I doubt there’s been anything like it in the history of two-party politics in this country.
Yes, it is deeply concerning.
The only people they seem to look after (and protect from policy) is the retired and they've dug a hole so deep there I struggle to see how they get out now.
Pray tell how they protect the retired. Raising the pittance of the state pension , the worst in the developed world by a country mile is hardly looking after them, it is less than bare minimum.
Yes, this is something I don't get. "Rich pensioners" isn't all pensioners. Its the minority who have been able to look after themselves. Like all other welfare support our pensions are truly dire. We are an expensive country to live in but pay very low pensions or maternity or unemployment compared to countries like Denmark or Spain.
And yet, try suggesting increasing pension credit faster and state pension more slowly and wait a few seconds for the incoming barrage of arguments that we can't possibly do that......
Even that is tinkering around the edges. We need to give all taxpayers money to spend. UBI. Every pound handed out to the poorest in UBI will be spent, much of it in the local economy. We need money to circulate to create jobs and bring back shops and businesses - it used to be called capitalism, we broke it and it needs a jump start.
The contrary view, put forward by American commentator Saagar Enjeti https://youtube.com/watch?v=ns_1EJkalx8 His view is that Russia and OPEC are still on the same page.
Was there agreement on the Ukrainian 1991 terms? The Guardian report says "A source from the Ukrainian delegation told the Al Arabiya and Al-Hadath news channels that the proposals were supported by several countries" which sounds a modest claim. But you know much more about what's happening to oil prices than I do.
The basic agreement as I understand it was that the war was a Bad Thing and talks at every available level should continue. Ukraine's allies want Russian withdrawal before talks, China wants a ceasefire before talks.
The Conservatives and Labour will always be the two main parties... until they are not.
Time was when: ...every boy and every gal That’s born into the world alive Is either a little Liberal Or else a little Conservative!
Neither party has a divine right to compete for power; it's not inconceivable that the LDs replace the Tories permanently (until the next change).
The oddness of the current polling is that we keep getting mad predictions of Labour winning everything everywhere. Supposedly that Channel 4 Poll last night had Labour taking Richmond off Sunak.
The electorate have shown they are well up for tactical voting. There is no mass desire for Sunak in the way there was for Blair. But there is a mass demand to get shut of this government. And people showing that they are motivated and well informed about how to vote to bring that about.
If there truly was a Tory collapse, surely there would be scores more LibDems elected rather than Labour winning Richmond. Some Greens too. But in what gets simplified as a two party choice the pollsters interpret national polls nationally instead of looking at reality.
Compare and contrast the LD vote in a seat we're the ABC choice in vs a seat where its Labour. In one seat we pick up a 5 figure majority, In the other seat we lose our deposit. That is what we can expect in the GE - Labour and LD candidates winning outrageous seats whilst their colleagues elsewhere lose their deposit.
Forget UNS.
All sounds entirely sensible, until you remember how poorly the LDs have performed at national elections since 2010.
Which is where Dave'n'George were smarter than the current team.
If Lib and Lab take potshots at each other (2015 due to coalition fallout, 2019 due to the awfulness of Jez 2.0), Conservatives can do well without too much difficulty.
By being so awful, the 2019-now government has made it clear to the red and yellow teams where they should be aiming their fire. And that's good for the Lib Dems in the 50(?) seats they can put on a decent show in, and good for Labour everywhere else in England.
Damned with faint praise there, much?
Electorally the current Tory team are simply not up to it. Activists locally getting restless. Suspect another bad set of locals would be Rishi's last.
May 24 is much too far into the endgame for a putsch.
If May 2024 shows Tory MPs down to the 91st safest (as per recent polling) losing their seats, 24 hours would be time enough.
It takes 24 seconds for a PM to call a General Election.
You know that the constitutional advice on a PM requesting a dissolution in the event of his imminent ousting is that it won't be accepted, right?
No, I didn't know that. I do know the Lascelles convention if that is what you mean, which states that refusal is an OPTION iff
1. the existing Parliament is still "vital, viable, and capable of doing its job", 2. a general election would be "detrimental to the national economy", and 3. the sovereign could "rely on finding another prime minister who could govern for a reasonable period with a working majority in the House of Commons".
1 and 2 LOL, to satisfy 3 you're going to have to have pre-coronated someone again.
1 is met, there is a majority Government.
2 is no longer part of the Convention AFAIK.
3 no need for a pre-coronation, the convention is that governments can undergo leadership campaigns while in office.
If the PM were ousted and a majority of the Commons were willing to have the Deputy PM (currently Oliver Dowden) or someone else as interim PM until the end of the leadership campaign, then Lascelles condition 3 would be met too.
On 1, it doesn't say "there is a majority" it says something different
I don't see what mechanism there is for amendment of the principles short of a further letter from Senex. What are you referring to?
The problem is, R granting the request is the default. You are suggesting he be asked to depart from precedent and go out of his way to further the interests of one faction in one political party. Not going to happen.
A majority of the Commons is one that is viable and capable of doing its job.
The Cabinet Office maintains the principles and the second was dropped from its guidance thirty years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lascelles_Principles Historian Peter Hennessy stated in 1994 that the second of the three conditions had since been "dropped from the canon", being no longer included in internal Cabinet Office guidance.[4]
R doesn't have to further any interests of any faction, he has to follow the guidance as it exists from the Cabinet Office, in order to stay out of political decisions.
The Conservatives and Labour will always be the two main parties... until they are not.
Time was when: ...every boy and every gal That’s born into the world alive Is either a little Liberal Or else a little Conservative!
Neither party has a divine right to compete for power; it's not inconceivable that the LDs replace the Tories permanently (until the next change).
The oddness of the current polling is that we keep getting mad predictions of Labour winning everything everywhere. Supposedly that Channel 4 Poll last night had Labour taking Richmond off Sunak.
The electorate have shown they are well up for tactical voting. There is no mass desire for Sunak in the way there was for Blair. But there is a mass demand to get shut of this government. And people showing that they are motivated and well informed about how to vote to bring that about.
If there truly was a Tory collapse, surely there would be scores more LibDems elected rather than Labour winning Richmond. Some Greens too. But in what gets simplified as a two party choice the pollsters interpret national polls nationally instead of looking at reality.
Compare and contrast the LD vote in a seat we're the ABC choice in vs a seat where its Labour. In one seat we pick up a 5 figure majority, In the other seat we lose our deposit. That is what we can expect in the GE - Labour and LD candidates winning outrageous seats whilst their colleagues elsewhere lose their deposit.
Forget UNS.
All sounds entirely sensible, until you remember how poorly the LDs have performed at national elections since 2010.
Which is where Dave'n'George were smarter than the current team.
If Lib and Lab take potshots at each other (2015 due to coalition fallout, 2019 due to the awfulness of Jez 2.0), Conservatives can do well without too much difficulty.
By being so awful, the 2019-now government has made it clear to the red and yellow teams where they should be aiming their fire. And that's good for the Lib Dems in the 50(?) seats they can put on a decent show in, and good for Labour everywhere else in England.
Damned with faint praise there, much?
Electorally the current Tory team are simply not up to it. Activists locally getting restless. Suspect another bad set of locals would be Rishi's last.
May 24 is much too far into the endgame for a putsch.
I don't think there will be a putsch because the remaining Tories are too bitterly enraged by the other factions to agree on a unity candidate.
But if that changed, why would May 24 be too late? Lets assume the Tories have a catastrophic election night with losses up and down the land showing that the ABC apocalypse is coming and coming hard.
Mrs Brady polishes his little pearl revolver and goes to Number 10 again again. We get an announcement about the rules for the leadership contest, and then swathes of the party declare fealty to Lee Anderson.
By the end of May Anderson is MP and has the summer and the autumn to transform the political narrative. Instead of 30p, the Tories will bribe the electorate with 50p. A maelstrom of campaigning where they try and prove that Starmer will steal your extra 20p. "I always said he was a Kid Starver" said ex Labour member and now Tory PPC for Don Valley BJO.
"Fifty Pee or Fuck Off" is the Tory conference slogan that gets the pundits aghast and the voters enthralled. The Mail publishes a letter proving that there is a woke leftie trans lawyer taking orders directly from Kid Starver who is planning to give your extra 20p to child rapists now being released into an open trans prison to be built IN YOUR TOWN!
Etc etc
Do people not think that May 24 will be when a GE is held? The only thing Sunak has left to his advantage is when he can call an election. If he clings on til the bitter end, a la Brown, he will have no hope of saving anything. I kind of assumed a GE at the same time as the locals - the party will stand or fall locally and nationally all in one go. I can't imagine local governments can afford to run two big election cycles in 6-8 months, and I don't suppose Sunak wants to get whomped in the locals and have a lame duck end of term.
Unless we witness the great Motorist revolution this winter, there will not be a General Election in May 24. Why go early when you will lose, when the alternative is wait out the rest of the year hoping something will turn up?
Their lame duck period is the entirety of the post-Covid period. They have excited the pandemic with no money and no clue what to do. We have had two changes of PM and the only impact has been to leave even less money available to do things with.
Good morning
Agreed and I think Sunak quite likes being PM.
October 24 gives him 2 years in the role then he can pursue other interests without the toxicity of Johnson and Truss, who are responsible for the trashing of the conservative brand
Morning Big_G and also Rochdale.
I completely agree. October '24 looks a good bet.
I don't agree with Mike about the likelihood of him leaving it until January '25, for all sort of reasons including the terrible 'optics' it creates of clinging to the last vestiges of power.
No, October 2024 looks very likely to me.
October '24 would be sensible and strategic, but how sensible and strategic is the government at the moment?
Right now, the poll average is basically L45C25. If it's still that in thirteen months time, what do the government lose by holding on for a few more months in case Something Turns Up?
And if the polls do close up a bit, say to L38C32, the temptation to let that run a bit further will be strong. It probably won't work, and probably will annoy the voters, but it would be tempting.
I don't think it is in the strategic interests of the Conservatives to go long, but I can see how they can rationalise it tactically. And right now, they are grabbing at short term tactics, which is partly why they and we are in this mess
"Despite the government’s focus on levelling up, the NIESR found wage growth had been fastest in London. It predicted real wage growth of 7% in the capital between the end of 2019 and 2024, compared with a fall of 5% in the West Midlands."
Indeed. Minimum wage is no longer the maximum wage in many industries, especially so in London. Thanks to Brexit, unskilled employees have seen large rises in their pay, especially those who changed jobs during the pandemic.
And yet...
In its quarterly update on the state of the economy, the NIESR said the poorest tenth of the population had been especially hard hit by Britain’s cost of living crisis and would need an income boost of £4,000 a year to have the same living standards they enjoyed in the year before Covid-19 arrived.
The poorest households – hit by weak wage growth, higher debt, the need to devote more of their budgets to expensive energy, food and housing costs; and with few if any savings – would be 17% worse off by the end of 2024 than they were five years earlier. The richest households would be 5% worse off.
And yet ...
Its almost as if two distinct things have happened. The pandemic, expensive food, energy etc is because of what has happened across the globe and would have happened with or without Brexit. That the cost of gas has shot up globally, and the UK relies upon gas, is not a Brexit issue.
The fact that the cost of housing is so high is a British issue, but not a Brexit issue. Build more houses to solve that one.
You thick clown , we produce lots of gas that we sell cheap and due to incompetence have no storage and so buy it back at high prices. How do you manage to dress yourself in the morning.
You're the thick clown.
We are a major net importer of gas.
If we were a net exporter of gas you might have a point, but we're not. We need to import gas, storage or no storage. We don't produce anywhere near enough gas - and the Opposition and the Scottish government it seems want us to produce even less of it.
You prove my point , where did I say we produced more than we need. I will say slowly for you , we sell our gas as we cannot store it , sensible countries buy it up in summer put it in their storage when it is cheap and no-one needs it , we then have to buy it back off them in winter when scarce and pay lots more for it. The SNP are deluded fcukwits so what.
Hard to find anything to argue with in OGH's summary. At least for yours truly!
Morning all.
@MikeSmithson keeps taking GE2019 as the benchmark. Whilst this looks right on paper, it's an illusion and for punters it's an error. GE2019 was a one-off 'Get Brexit Done' election to unblock the jam created during the Remainer Parliament. Boris Johnson galvanised the voters against the unelectable trotskyite anti-semitic Jeremy Corbyn with the sole aim of Getting Brexit Done. Hence the December election. In many ways GE2019 was NOT a General Election.
The last proper General Election in the UK was June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament. That's your benchmark.
Bet accordingly.
p.s. I'm personally very glad that Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair.
I think I understand the point you are making - whilst the 2019 election is the status quo, its artificial. Ordinarily the Labour task would be considered politically unlikely - as we all said in the aftermath.
But if we consider the 2019 result to be the aberration, then a revision to the norm can be expected to happen as the start of any new electoral move. There are swathes of red wall seats which endless polls have shows will not just revert to Labour but will deliver them 5 figure majorities.
If we bake that 2017 reversion in, the task facing Starmer is much smaller, and much more attainable. Then we look at the two other political low tides from 2015 likely to come back in:
The absence of unionist MPs in Scotland feels like a situation that can't be sustained - so expect 20-30 seats to switch from the motorhome party. The absence of yellow MPs in rural England is already a tide rushing back in. The focus is always on Labour, but as is clear it is the LibDems who will mop up disaffected sane voters in places where "Sink the Boats" makes people feel sick.
So, we reset the Red Wall. We drain out the SNP flood. We remove the dam from the LibDems. And suddenly a thumping Tory defeat is not just possible, it feels likely. To stay in power they need to preserve all three of these artificial positions. Which politically means they need to be Janus, a task they are spectacularly failing to pull off.
Yes, I think the Tories have snookered themselves. It is hard to see any of those 3 fronts being contained next GE. While Scotland is unique, the other 2 fronts play out across most E and W constituencies. They are sociological rather than geographical waves.
Tory unpopularity with the working age population is astonishing. I doubt there’s been anything like it in the history of two-party politics in this country.
Yes, it is deeply concerning.
The only people they seem to look after (and protect from policy) is the retired and they've dug a hole so deep there I struggle to see how they get out now.
Pray tell how they protect the retired. Raising the pittance of the state pension , the worst in the developed world by a country mile is hardly looking after them, it is less than bare minimum.
Yes, this is something I don't get. "Rich pensioners" isn't all pensioners. Its the minority who have been able to look after themselves. Like all other welfare support our pensions are truly dire. We are an expensive country to live in but pay very low pensions or maternity or unemployment compared to countries like Denmark or Spain.
And yet, try suggesting increasing pension credit faster and state pension more slowly and wait a few seconds for the incoming barrage of arguments that we can't possibly do that......
Even that is tinkering around the edges. We need to give all taxpayers money to spend. UBI. Every pound handed out to the poorest in UBI will be spent, much of it in the local economy. We need money to circulate to create jobs and bring back shops and businesses - it used to be called capitalism, we broke it and it needs a jump start.
They are blinkered and only think how much more they can get and feck the majority.
Hard to find anything to argue with in OGH's summary. At least for yours truly!
Morning all.
@MikeSmithson keeps taking GE2019 as the benchmark. Whilst this looks right on paper, it's an illusion and for punters it's an error. GE2019 was a one-off 'Get Brexit Done' election to unblock the jam created during the Remainer Parliament. Boris Johnson galvanised the voters against the unelectable trotskyite anti-semitic Jeremy Corbyn with the sole aim of Getting Brexit Done. Hence the December election. In many ways GE2019 was NOT a General Election.
The last proper General Election in the UK was June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament. That's your benchmark.
Bet accordingly.
p.s. I'm personally very glad that Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair.
I think I understand the point you are making - whilst the 2019 election is the status quo, its artificial. Ordinarily the Labour task would be considered politically unlikely - as we all said in the aftermath.
But if we consider the 2019 result to be the aberration, then a revision to the norm can be expected to happen as the start of any new electoral move. There are swathes of red wall seats which endless polls have shows will not just revert to Labour but will deliver them 5 figure majorities.
If we bake that 2017 reversion in, the task facing Starmer is much smaller, and much more attainable. Then we look at the two other political low tides from 2015 likely to come back in:
The absence of unionist MPs in Scotland feels like a situation that can't be sustained - so expect 20-30 seats to switch from the motorhome party. The absence of yellow MPs in rural England is already a tide rushing back in. The focus is always on Labour, but as is clear it is the LibDems who will mop up disaffected sane voters in places where "Sink the Boats" makes people feel sick.
So, we reset the Red Wall. We drain out the SNP flood. We remove the dam from the LibDems. And suddenly a thumping Tory defeat is not just possible, it feels likely. To stay in power they need to preserve all three of these artificial positions. Which politically means they need to be Janus, a task they are spectacularly failing to pull off.
Yes, I think the Tories have snookered themselves. It is hard to see any of those 3 fronts being contained next GE. While Scotland is unique, the other 2 fronts play out across most E and W constituencies. They are sociological rather than geographical waves.
I get the objection. "Labour can't win that many seats". And from a standing start that would be true. But as I pointed out: 1. Red Wall Reversion to lifetime voting habits. Scores of seats flip blue to red - 2 points for each 2. Scottish independence tide reverts now they realise Bully's Star Prize was a speedboat, and they live in Kilmarnock, and besides which the party have nicked the speedboat. 20-30 seats flip orange to red - 2 points for each 3. Blue wall revulsion to "sink the boats" tendencies. Another 20-30 seats to flip blue to yellow - 1 point each as on paper the LDs would be in opposition to Labour, but we know in reality every party bar the DUP are ABC
And that is just the reversion phase of the election. Then we go after the seats not involved in these three tidal movements, where we're not just resetting the 2017 and 2015 tides but pushing Red and Blue into places not won in a while. With a government this unpopular and unhinged, projections show all kinds of results are doable. Whilst I dismiss some of the more excitable predictions, you can see how it is achievable.
Achievable. Not guaranteed.
Not au fait with Scottish Politics for sure , SNP does not equal Independence support. It si still at teh 50% mark despite their besyt efforts. People may give SNP a bloody nose but Independence is not going away.
Supporting independence as an ideal and voting for a unionist party is what will happen to a lot of voters. The SNP tide is receding and at Westminster there aren't alternatives.
As long as the UK lurches along in its broken state, independence will remain a direct goal for many - I know that. But politically it is in retreat due to the bungling corruption of the SNP.
Sadly I have to agree with you, SNP have trashed the short term chances.
There will be fireworks at the Labour Party conference this year! The activist base definitely won’t be approving of the change in stance, even if it’s the sensible thing to do.
I know literally hundreds of Labour activists (do you?). None of them are raising this. There will be a row about PR, since the constituencies and some unions favour it and the leadership doesn't want to be pinned down (on that or anything else). Otherwise I'll be surprised if there are fireworks on anything. The party is boringly focused on winning, in the manner of smokers who have had a bout of lung disease - we wish we could have a puff, but we suppose we'd better not.
I’ll admit that you know a lot more Labour activists than I do
Do you think that the hardcore gender activists will move towards the Greens and LDs, but perhaps vote Lab tactically at the election?
Yes, exactly (though more Green that LD). And "perhaps" is right - some will go BJo and vote Green regardless. Generally the LibLab electorate is pretty much up for tactical voting but the Green vote much less so. The Green and RefUK voting intentions are rather similar in that way - both express near-terminal frustration with the mainstream options, but some will be persuadable.
Not sure how many hardcore gender activists there are, but the same applies to hardcore activists on other fronts. But there's a big chink of activists like me - actually very left wing in some ways, but also pragmatic. We need to win this one and govern cautiously, and we can argue about details in the second term.
Outside of "not being the Conservatives" - what is SKS's Labour party offering you as someone who is "actually very left wing in some ways"?
Right now, very little. But not being a government dedicated solely to hard right right culture war rhetoric while hollowing out the economy is a decent start. A first term Labour government has to be about taking the quick wins where they are available - planning reform, a closer relationship with the EU, much tighter regulation of privatised utilities etc - and doing the least possible damage elsewhere. Build the foundations for deeper transformation. A Tory opposition going full-on GOP will buy the time necessary. Of course, the Tories may not go even further down the rabbit hole if they end up losing the election, but looking at the realistic candidates for leadership that seems unlikely.
Hard to find anything to argue with in OGH's summary. At least for yours truly!
Morning all.
@MikeSmithson keeps taking GE2019 as the benchmark. Whilst this looks right on paper, it's an illusion and for punters it's an error. GE2019 was a one-off 'Get Brexit Done' election to unblock the jam created during the Remainer Parliament. Boris Johnson galvanised the voters against the unelectable trotskyite anti-semitic Jeremy Corbyn with the sole aim of Getting Brexit Done. Hence the December election. In many ways GE2019 was NOT a General Election.
The last proper General Election in the UK was June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament. That's your benchmark.
Bet accordingly.
p.s. I'm personally very glad that Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair.
I think I understand the point you are making - whilst the 2019 election is the status quo, its artificial. Ordinarily the Labour task would be considered politically unlikely - as we all said in the aftermath.
But if we consider the 2019 result to be the aberration, then a revision to the norm can be expected to happen as the start of any new electoral move. There are swathes of red wall seats which endless polls have shows will not just revert to Labour but will deliver them 5 figure majorities.
If we bake that 2017 reversion in, the task facing Starmer is much smaller, and much more attainable. Then we look at the two other political low tides from 2015 likely to come back in:
The absence of unionist MPs in Scotland feels like a situation that can't be sustained - so expect 20-30 seats to switch from the motorhome party. The absence of yellow MPs in rural England is already a tide rushing back in. The focus is always on Labour, but as is clear it is the LibDems who will mop up disaffected sane voters in places where "Sink the Boats" makes people feel sick.
So, we reset the Red Wall. We drain out the SNP flood. We remove the dam from the LibDems. And suddenly a thumping Tory defeat is not just possible, it feels likely. To stay in power they need to preserve all three of these artificial positions. Which politically means they need to be Janus, a task they are spectacularly failing to pull off.
Yes, I think the Tories have snookered themselves. It is hard to see any of those 3 fronts being contained next GE. While Scotland is unique, the other 2 fronts play out across most E and W constituencies. They are sociological rather than geographical waves.
Tory unpopularity with the working age population is astonishing. I doubt there’s been anything like it in the history of two-party politics in this country.
What possible reason is there at the minute for someone who works for a living to support the Tories?
Sunak has made his bed and shown that working people only exist in his eyes to be taxed ever higher to provide welfare for those who don't work. That's something you can understand from Labour, but from the Tories?
The jack boots will be on next and barbed wire being put up to intern unemployed and pensioners. Give it a rest Adolf.
Hang on. Barty is an absolutist which often translates into absurdist straw man positions - the rant about 30mph zones a perfect example. But he has a point - the status quo is broken. We *are* paying vast amounts in taxes. Where he descends into the absurdist is the suggestion that the money is going into welfare. When our welfare system grudgingly gives people living poverty assuming it pays anything at all.
We're paying record taxes, true. But its going to spivs, not on services, not on infrastructure, not on welfare. We pay lots and get little. Where does all that money go? Even if you are as high Tory and say "inefficiency" that is literally my point. Inefficiency means money is being wasted. Spent on consultants. Advisers. Middlemen. Spivs...
The problem we have is that whilst "we pay taxes and get little back" is good analysis, nobody wants to go after why that is. And propose a solution because the problem is too big and our politicians too timid.
Your jackboots analogy is one solution. Hungary have done it. France wants to do it. Spain and Germany are toying with it...
The bit in bold: it goes on debt repayments.
We have a shit-ton of debt. We need to reflate the economy to lessen the debt burden over time via inflation. But the anti-inflationary reflexes we built up in the neoliberal era prevent us from doing this. So we have problems.
That isn't true with public services. We spend ever larger amounts on schools and hospitals despite front line service provision being catastrophically starved of money.
A basic problem is that everything has been marketised. Instead of driving market-led efficiency we have endless overlapping targets and contracts and regulations. The market is a vast business by itself.
How much money did we waste creating Clinical Commissioning Groups in the NHS? Then replacing them with Integrated Care Boards? How integrated are the dozens of "integrated" boards and how many contracts do they negotiate and manage and how much is spent on administration?
Thats our problem. A fat layer of middlemen who suck the cash out of the system.
The Conservatives and Labour will always be the two main parties... until they are not.
Time was when: ...every boy and every gal That’s born into the world alive Is either a little Liberal Or else a little Conservative!
Neither party has a divine right to compete for power; it's not inconceivable that the LDs replace the Tories permanently (until the next change).
The oddness of the current polling is that we keep getting mad predictions of Labour winning everything everywhere. Supposedly that Channel 4 Poll last night had Labour taking Richmond off Sunak.
The electorate have shown they are well up for tactical voting. There is no mass desire for Sunak in the way there was for Blair. But there is a mass demand to get shut of this government. And people showing that they are motivated and well informed about how to vote to bring that about.
If there truly was a Tory collapse, surely there would be scores more LibDems elected rather than Labour winning Richmond. Some Greens too. But in what gets simplified as a two party choice the pollsters interpret national polls nationally instead of looking at reality.
Compare and contrast the LD vote in a seat we're the ABC choice in vs a seat where its Labour. In one seat we pick up a 5 figure majority, In the other seat we lose our deposit. That is what we can expect in the GE - Labour and LD candidates winning outrageous seats whilst their colleagues elsewhere lose their deposit.
Forget UNS.
All sounds entirely sensible, until you remember how poorly the LDs have performed at national elections since 2010.
Which is where Dave'n'George were smarter than the current team.
If Lib and Lab take potshots at each other (2015 due to coalition fallout, 2019 due to the awfulness of Jez 2.0), Conservatives can do well without too much difficulty.
By being so awful, the 2019-now government has made it clear to the red and yellow teams where they should be aiming their fire. And that's good for the Lib Dems in the 50(?) seats they can put on a decent show in, and good for Labour everywhere else in England.
Damned with faint praise there, much?
Electorally the current Tory team are simply not up to it. Activists locally getting restless. Suspect another bad set of locals would be Rishi's last.
Blimey, that would make six Tory PMs since 2016... Hardly screams strong and stable. You want to give the people who chose Truss another pop at selecting the leader of a UN P5 and G7 economy? Remind me of the definition of insanity, again.
So its better to have the person who lost to Truss?
It's not about strong and stable; it's about scraping the barnacles off the boat preparing the party for an election.
For the 2019 voting Tory brand AND most of the recent activist base, the biggest barnacles are in No 10 and No 11.
But what are you suggesting instead ?
Nobody is going to believe promises of unfunded tax cuts.
And few Conservatives seem to want to boast about full employment and NHS employment increasing by 300k since 2019.
Tackling public sector pension entitlement, and reducing the size of the civil service.
Freeing the country from the interfering 'man from the govt, here to help'.
Which leads to the response of "you've had 13 years to do that".
Now they're traditional conservative/libertarian ideas but how much money would they save and how much bureaucracy would they reduce.
Not a lot of either and nor would they get you many votes.
Because there are many millions of people who don't want less help from the government but instead think the government should be helping them more.
And that includes large parts of the Conservatives oldie voting base.
It saves money, cuts the deficit, and powers growth at the same time.
People need to stand on their own feet. Trying socialism lite usually leads to people wanting full fat socialism, until it then runs out of money and people remember that nothing is free....
Telling people they need to 'stand on their own two feet' isn't easy since the banks were bailed out.
Nor is it helped by sleaze in the executive oligarchy.
Standing on your own two feet doesn't include preferential treatment for being a political donor or mysterious payments and non-jobs to politicians who leave office from dubious foreign organisations.
Agreed. A Conservative Party with integrity might actually have some interesting solutions to offer. The current lot are just a front for kleptocracy.
Hard to find anything to argue with in OGH's summary. At least for yours truly!
Morning all.
@MikeSmithson keeps taking GE2019 as the benchmark. Whilst this looks right on paper, it's an illusion and for punters it's an error. GE2019 was a one-off 'Get Brexit Done' election to unblock the jam created during the Remainer Parliament. Boris Johnson galvanised the voters against the unelectable trotskyite anti-semitic Jeremy Corbyn with the sole aim of Getting Brexit Done. Hence the December election. In many ways GE2019 was NOT a General Election.
The last proper General Election in the UK was June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament. That's your benchmark.
Bet accordingly.
p.s. I'm personally very glad that Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair.
I think I understand the point you are making - whilst the 2019 election is the status quo, its artificial. Ordinarily the Labour task would be considered politically unlikely - as we all said in the aftermath.
But if we consider the 2019 result to be the aberration, then a revision to the norm can be expected to happen as the start of any new electoral move. There are swathes of red wall seats which endless polls have shows will not just revert to Labour but will deliver them 5 figure majorities.
If we bake that 2017 reversion in, the task facing Starmer is much smaller, and much more attainable. Then we look at the two other political low tides from 2015 likely to come back in:
The absence of unionist MPs in Scotland feels like a situation that can't be sustained - so expect 20-30 seats to switch from the motorhome party. The absence of yellow MPs in rural England is already a tide rushing back in. The focus is always on Labour, but as is clear it is the LibDems who will mop up disaffected sane voters in places where "Sink the Boats" makes people feel sick.
So, we reset the Red Wall. We drain out the SNP flood. We remove the dam from the LibDems. And suddenly a thumping Tory defeat is not just possible, it feels likely. To stay in power they need to preserve all three of these artificial positions. Which politically means they need to be Janus, a task they are spectacularly failing to pull off.
Yes, I think the Tories have snookered themselves. It is hard to see any of those 3 fronts being contained next GE. While Scotland is unique, the other 2 fronts play out across most E and W constituencies. They are sociological rather than geographical waves.
Tory unpopularity with the working age population is astonishing. I doubt there’s been anything like it in the history of two-party politics in this country.
What possible reason is there at the minute for someone who works for a living to support the Tories?
Sunak has made his bed and shown that working people only exist in his eyes to be taxed ever higher to provide welfare for those who don't work. That's something you can understand from Labour, but from the Tories?
The jack boots will be on next and barbed wire being put up to intern unemployed and pensioners. Give it a rest Adolf.
Hang on. Barty is an absolutist which often translates into absurdist straw man positions - the rant about 30mph zones a perfect example. But he has a point - the status quo is broken. We *are* paying vast amounts in taxes. Where he descends into the absurdist is the suggestion that the money is going into welfare. When our welfare system grudgingly gives people living poverty assuming it pays anything at all.
We're paying record taxes, true. But its going to spivs, not on services, not on infrastructure, not on welfare. We pay lots and get little. Where does all that money go? Even if you are as high Tory and say "inefficiency" that is literally my point. Inefficiency means money is being wasted. Spent on consultants. Advisers. Middlemen. Spivs...
The problem we have is that whilst "we pay taxes and get little back" is good analysis, nobody wants to go after why that is. And propose a solution because the problem is too big and our politicians too timid.
Your jackboots analogy is one solution. Hungary have done it. France wants to do it. Spain and Germany are toying with it...
The bit in bold: it goes on debt repayments.
We have a shit-ton of debt. We need to reflate the economy to lessen the debt burden over time via inflation. But the anti-inflationary reflexes we built up in the neoliberal era prevent us from doing this. So we have problems.
According to the Commons Library in 2022/23 net debt interest was £111 billion
An utterly ginormous sum and why future governments will not have any money to spend on their projects
"Despite the government’s focus on levelling up, the NIESR found wage growth had been fastest in London. It predicted real wage growth of 7% in the capital between the end of 2019 and 2024, compared with a fall of 5% in the West Midlands."
Indeed. Minimum wage is no longer the maximum wage in many industries, especially so in London. Thanks to Brexit, unskilled employees have seen large rises in their pay, especially those who changed jobs during the pandemic.
And yet...
In its quarterly update on the state of the economy, the NIESR said the poorest tenth of the population had been especially hard hit by Britain’s cost of living crisis and would need an income boost of £4,000 a year to have the same living standards they enjoyed in the year before Covid-19 arrived.
The poorest households – hit by weak wage growth, higher debt, the need to devote more of their budgets to expensive energy, food and housing costs; and with few if any savings – would be 17% worse off by the end of 2024 than they were five years earlier. The richest households would be 5% worse off.
And yet ...
Its almost as if two distinct things have happened. The pandemic, expensive food, energy etc is because of what has happened across the globe and would have happened with or without Brexit. That the cost of gas has shot up globally, and the UK relies upon gas, is not a Brexit issue.
The fact that the cost of housing is so high is a British issue, but not a Brexit issue. Build more houses to solve that one.
The single largest Brexit issue is that our government has spent the last decade concentrating on little else.
There are precious few benefits, significant ongoing costs, and a large majority of the electorate wish it had never happened.
Would we really be better off if Rees Mogg, Williamson, Truss, Patel, Bozo, Raab, Kwarteng etc had set their "talents" onto improving the NHS or education or the economy instead of Brexit?
I'd say the biggest costs of Brexit are societal division and a decline in the calibre of politicians and political debate.
Without Brexit few if any of them would have been in government.
Which is the point. They are a malign symptom of the enormous Brexit distraction.
Its quite possible, indeed probable, that many of them would have been in government without Brexit.
Almost all of them were part of the Government under Cameron pre-referendum and not backbenchers. Only Rees Mogg and Kwarteng from memory are the exceptions - and Kwarteng was considered a "rising star" pre-referendum.
If you think Brexit was a distraction, then surely you'd want to put it behind us by moving on from arguments over Europe? Doing a hokey-cokey rejoin campaign would be just as much if not more of a distraction than Brexit was.
Nice try. A look at Cameron's actual cabinet shows that to be fanciful. Osborne; May; Hammond; Gove; Fallon; Crabb; Hunt; Grayling; Greening; McLoughlin; Javid; Villiers; Truss; Clark; Letwin; Mundell; Rudd.
And who said anything about what happens next ? For now, government continues to be distracted by the ongoing and unpopular project.
The Government extends beyond the actual cabinet and includes the entire payroll vote. Almost all of those named (besides AFAIK "rising star" Kwarteng and Rees Mogg) the rest named were on the Cameron payroll vote.
There are very few working people who will support the Tories on the basis of "hey, if my parents peg it then I'll get an inheritance". About HYUFD and that's it.
I do think the tory reliance on the aged gets overstated.
You can see from the tory grotbags on here that they still have some, limited, appeal beyond the type of old people who get cheated out of their life savings by Indian tech support scammers. In this threadbare electoral coalition there are cod libertarians, social conservatives, monotone trans-obsessives, continuity leavers, lachrymose nostalgics and simple minded xenophobes.
Hard to find anything to argue with in OGH's summary. At least for yours truly!
Morning all.
@MikeSmithson keeps taking GE2019 as the benchmark. Whilst this looks right on paper, it's an illusion and for punters it's an error. GE2019 was a one-off 'Get Brexit Done' election to unblock the jam created during the Remainer Parliament. Boris Johnson galvanised the voters against the unelectable trotskyite anti-semitic Jeremy Corbyn with the sole aim of Getting Brexit Done. Hence the December election. In many ways GE2019 was NOT a General Election.
The last proper General Election in the UK was June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament. That's your benchmark.
Bet accordingly.
p.s. I'm personally very glad that Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair.
I think I understand the point you are making - whilst the 2019 election is the status quo, its artificial. Ordinarily the Labour task would be considered politically unlikely - as we all said in the aftermath.
But if we consider the 2019 result to be the aberration, then a revision to the norm can be expected to happen as the start of any new electoral move. There are swathes of red wall seats which endless polls have shows will not just revert to Labour but will deliver them 5 figure majorities.
If we bake that 2017 reversion in, the task facing Starmer is much smaller, and much more attainable. Then we look at the two other political low tides from 2015 likely to come back in:
The absence of unionist MPs in Scotland feels like a situation that can't be sustained - so expect 20-30 seats to switch from the motorhome party. The absence of yellow MPs in rural England is already a tide rushing back in. The focus is always on Labour, but as is clear it is the LibDems who will mop up disaffected sane voters in places where "Sink the Boats" makes people feel sick.
So, we reset the Red Wall. We drain out the SNP flood. We remove the dam from the LibDems. And suddenly a thumping Tory defeat is not just possible, it feels likely. To stay in power they need to preserve all three of these artificial positions. Which politically means they need to be Janus, a task they are spectacularly failing to pull off.
Yes, I think the Tories have snookered themselves. It is hard to see any of those 3 fronts being contained next GE. While Scotland is unique, the other 2 fronts play out across most E and W constituencies. They are sociological rather than geographical waves.
Tory unpopularity with the working age population is astonishing. I doubt there’s been anything like it in the history of two-party politics in this country.
What possible reason is there at the minute for someone who works for a living to support the Tories?
Sunak has made his bed and shown that working people only exist in his eyes to be taxed ever higher to provide welfare for those who don't work. That's something you can understand from Labour, but from the Tories?
The jack boots will be on next and barbed wire being put up to intern unemployed and pensioners. Give it a rest Adolf.
Hang on. Barty is an absolutist which often translates into absurdist straw man positions - the rant about 30mph zones a perfect example. But he has a point - the status quo is broken. We *are* paying vast amounts in taxes. Where he descends into the absurdist is the suggestion that the money is going into welfare. When our welfare system grudgingly gives people living poverty assuming it pays anything at all.
We're paying record taxes, true. But its going to spivs, not on services, not on infrastructure, not on welfare. We pay lots and get little. Where does all that money go? Even if you are as high Tory and say "inefficiency" that is literally my point. Inefficiency means money is being wasted. Spent on consultants. Advisers. Middlemen. Spivs...
The problem we have is that whilst "we pay taxes and get little back" is good analysis, nobody wants to go after why that is. And propose a solution because the problem is too big and our politicians too timid.
Your jackboots analogy is one solution. Hungary have done it. France wants to do it. Spain and Germany are toying with it...
The bit in bold: it goes on debt repayments.
We have a shit-ton of debt. We need to reflate the economy to lessen the debt burden over time via inflation. But the anti-inflationary reflexes we built up in the neoliberal era prevent us from doing this. So we have problems.
That isn't true with public services. We spend ever larger amounts on schools and hospitals despite front line service provision being catastrophically starved of money.
A basic problem is that everything has been marketised. Instead of driving market-led efficiency we have endless overlapping targets and contracts and regulations. The market is a vast business by itself.
How much money did we waste creating Clinical Commissioning Groups in the NHS? Then replacing them with Integrated Care Boards? How integrated are the dozens of "integrated" boards and how many contracts do they negotiate and manage and how much is spent on administration?
Thats our problem. A fat layer of middlemen who suck the cash out of the system.
And in education, trust chief execs who extract absurd sums from the education budget for very little effect.
Hard to find anything to argue with in OGH's summary. At least for yours truly!
Morning all.
@MikeSmithson keeps taking GE2019 as the benchmark. Whilst this looks right on paper, it's an illusion and for punters it's an error. GE2019 was a one-off 'Get Brexit Done' election to unblock the jam created during the Remainer Parliament. Boris Johnson galvanised the voters against the unelectable trotskyite anti-semitic Jeremy Corbyn with the sole aim of Getting Brexit Done. Hence the December election. In many ways GE2019 was NOT a General Election.
The last proper General Election in the UK was June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament. That's your benchmark.
Bet accordingly.
p.s. I'm personally very glad that Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair.
I think I understand the point you are making - whilst the 2019 election is the status quo, its artificial. Ordinarily the Labour task would be considered politically unlikely - as we all said in the aftermath.
But if we consider the 2019 result to be the aberration, then a revision to the norm can be expected to happen as the start of any new electoral move. There are swathes of red wall seats which endless polls have shows will not just revert to Labour but will deliver them 5 figure majorities.
If we bake that 2017 reversion in, the task facing Starmer is much smaller, and much more attainable. Then we look at the two other political low tides from 2015 likely to come back in:
The absence of unionist MPs in Scotland feels like a situation that can't be sustained - so expect 20-30 seats to switch from the motorhome party. The absence of yellow MPs in rural England is already a tide rushing back in. The focus is always on Labour, but as is clear it is the LibDems who will mop up disaffected sane voters in places where "Sink the Boats" makes people feel sick.
So, we reset the Red Wall. We drain out the SNP flood. We remove the dam from the LibDems. And suddenly a thumping Tory defeat is not just possible, it feels likely. To stay in power they need to preserve all three of these artificial positions. Which politically means they need to be Janus, a task they are spectacularly failing to pull off.
Yes, I think the Tories have snookered themselves. It is hard to see any of those 3 fronts being contained next GE. While Scotland is unique, the other 2 fronts play out across most E and W constituencies. They are sociological rather than geographical waves.
Tory unpopularity with the working age population is astonishing. I doubt there’s been anything like it in the history of two-party politics in this country.
What possible reason is there at the minute for someone who works for a living to support the Tories?
Sunak has made his bed and shown that working people only exist in his eyes to be taxed ever higher to provide welfare for those who don't work. That's something you can understand from Labour, but from the Tories?
The jack boots will be on next and barbed wire being put up to intern unemployed and pensioners. Give it a rest Adolf.
Hang on. Barty is an absolutist which often translates into absurdist straw man positions - the rant about 30mph zones a perfect example. But he has a point - the status quo is broken. We *are* paying vast amounts in taxes. Where he descends into the absurdist is the suggestion that the money is going into welfare. When our welfare system grudgingly gives people living poverty assuming it pays anything at all.
We're paying record taxes, true. But its going to spivs, not on services, not on infrastructure, not on welfare. We pay lots and get little. Where does all that money go? Even if you are as high Tory and say "inefficiency" that is literally my point. Inefficiency means money is being wasted. Spent on consultants. Advisers. Middlemen. Spivs...
The problem we have is that whilst "we pay taxes and get little back" is good analysis, nobody wants to go after why that is. And propose a solution because the problem is too big and our politicians too timid.
Your jackboots analogy is one solution. Hungary have done it. France wants to do it. Spain and Germany are toying with it...
I also agree on the tax , eye watering amounts. We are in violent agreement today.
Hard to find anything to argue with in OGH's summary. At least for yours truly!
Morning all.
@MikeSmithson keeps taking GE2019 as the benchmark. Whilst this looks right on paper, it's an illusion and for punters it's an error. GE2019 was a one-off 'Get Brexit Done' election to unblock the jam created during the Remainer Parliament. Boris Johnson galvanised the voters against the unelectable trotskyite anti-semitic Jeremy Corbyn with the sole aim of Getting Brexit Done. Hence the December election. In many ways GE2019 was NOT a General Election.
The last proper General Election in the UK was June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament. That's your benchmark.
Bet accordingly.
p.s. I'm personally very glad that Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair.
I think I understand the point you are making - whilst the 2019 election is the status quo, its artificial. Ordinarily the Labour task would be considered politically unlikely - as we all said in the aftermath.
But if we consider the 2019 result to be the aberration, then a revision to the norm can be expected to happen as the start of any new electoral move. There are swathes of red wall seats which endless polls have shows will not just revert to Labour but will deliver them 5 figure majorities.
If we bake that 2017 reversion in, the task facing Starmer is much smaller, and much more attainable. Then we look at the two other political low tides from 2015 likely to come back in:
The absence of unionist MPs in Scotland feels like a situation that can't be sustained - so expect 20-30 seats to switch from the motorhome party. The absence of yellow MPs in rural England is already a tide rushing back in. The focus is always on Labour, but as is clear it is the LibDems who will mop up disaffected sane voters in places where "Sink the Boats" makes people feel sick.
So, we reset the Red Wall. We drain out the SNP flood. We remove the dam from the LibDems. And suddenly a thumping Tory defeat is not just possible, it feels likely. To stay in power they need to preserve all three of these artificial positions. Which politically means they need to be Janus, a task they are spectacularly failing to pull off.
Yes, I think the Tories have snookered themselves. It is hard to see any of those 3 fronts being contained next GE. While Scotland is unique, the other 2 fronts play out across most E and W constituencies. They are sociological rather than geographical waves.
Tory unpopularity with the working age population is astonishing. I doubt there’s been anything like it in the history of two-party politics in this country.
What possible reason is there at the minute for someone who works for a living to support the Tories?
Sunak has made his bed and shown that working people only exist in his eyes to be taxed ever higher to provide welfare for those who don't work. That's something you can understand from Labour, but from the Tories?
The jack boots will be on next and barbed wire being put up to intern unemployed and pensioners. Give it a rest Adolf.
Hang on. Barty is an absolutist which often translates into absurdist straw man positions - the rant about 30mph zones a perfect example. But he has a point - the status quo is broken. We *are* paying vast amounts in taxes. Where he descends into the absurdist is the suggestion that the money is going into welfare. When our welfare system grudgingly gives people living poverty assuming it pays anything at all.
We're paying record taxes, true. But its going to spivs, not on services, not on infrastructure, not on welfare. We pay lots and get little. Where does all that money go? Even if you are as high Tory and say "inefficiency" that is literally my point. Inefficiency means money is being wasted. Spent on consultants. Advisers. Middlemen. Spivs...
The problem we have is that whilst "we pay taxes and get little back" is good analysis, nobody wants to go after why that is. And propose a solution because the problem is too big and our politicians too timid.
Your jackboots analogy is one solution. Hungary have done it. France wants to do it. Spain and Germany are toying with it...
The bit in bold: it goes on debt repayments.
We have a shit-ton of debt. We need to reflate the economy to lessen the debt burden over time via inflation. But the anti-inflationary reflexes we built up in the neoliberal era prevent us from doing this. So we have problems.
According to the Commons Library in 2022/23 net debt interest was £111 billion
An utterly ginormous sum and why future governments will not have any money to spend on their projects
Hard to find anything to argue with in OGH's summary. At least for yours truly!
Morning all.
@MikeSmithson keeps taking GE2019 as the benchmark. Whilst this looks right on paper, it's an illusion and for punters it's an error. GE2019 was a one-off 'Get Brexit Done' election to unblock the jam created during the Remainer Parliament. Boris Johnson galvanised the voters against the unelectable trotskyite anti-semitic Jeremy Corbyn with the sole aim of Getting Brexit Done. Hence the December election. In many ways GE2019 was NOT a General Election.
The last proper General Election in the UK was June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament. That's your benchmark.
Bet accordingly.
p.s. I'm personally very glad that Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair.
I think I understand the point you are making - whilst the 2019 election is the status quo, its artificial. Ordinarily the Labour task would be considered politically unlikely - as we all said in the aftermath.
But if we consider the 2019 result to be the aberration, then a revision to the norm can be expected to happen as the start of any new electoral move. There are swathes of red wall seats which endless polls have shows will not just revert to Labour but will deliver them 5 figure majorities.
If we bake that 2017 reversion in, the task facing Starmer is much smaller, and much more attainable. Then we look at the two other political low tides from 2015 likely to come back in:
The absence of unionist MPs in Scotland feels like a situation that can't be sustained - so expect 20-30 seats to switch from the motorhome party. The absence of yellow MPs in rural England is already a tide rushing back in. The focus is always on Labour, but as is clear it is the LibDems who will mop up disaffected sane voters in places where "Sink the Boats" makes people feel sick.
So, we reset the Red Wall. We drain out the SNP flood. We remove the dam from the LibDems. And suddenly a thumping Tory defeat is not just possible, it feels likely. To stay in power they need to preserve all three of these artificial positions. Which politically means they need to be Janus, a task they are spectacularly failing to pull off.
Yes, I think the Tories have snookered themselves. It is hard to see any of those 3 fronts being contained next GE. While Scotland is unique, the other 2 fronts play out across most E and W constituencies. They are sociological rather than geographical waves.
Tory unpopularity with the working age population is astonishing. I doubt there’s been anything like it in the history of two-party politics in this country.
What possible reason is there at the minute for someone who works for a living to support the Tories?
Sunak has made his bed and shown that working people only exist in his eyes to be taxed ever higher to provide welfare for those who don't work. That's something you can understand from Labour, but from the Tories?
The jack boots will be on next and barbed wire being put up to intern unemployed and pensioners. Give it a rest Adolf.
Hang on. Barty is an absolutist which often translates into absurdist straw man positions - the rant about 30mph zones a perfect example. But he has a point - the status quo is broken. We *are* paying vast amounts in taxes. Where he descends into the absurdist is the suggestion that the money is going into welfare. When our welfare system grudgingly gives people living poverty assuming it pays anything at all.
We're paying record taxes, true. But its going to spivs, not on services, not on infrastructure, not on welfare. We pay lots and get little. Where does all that money go? Even if you are as high Tory and say "inefficiency" that is literally my point. Inefficiency means money is being wasted. Spent on consultants. Advisers. Middlemen. Spivs...
The problem we have is that whilst "we pay taxes and get little back" is good analysis, nobody wants to go after why that is. And propose a solution because the problem is too big and our politicians too timid.
Your jackboots analogy is one solution. Hungary have done it. France wants to do it. Spain and Germany are toying with it...
Spain said no. The Vox response since the election has been to appoint an ex-Falangist as their new Parliamentary spokesman. It's unlikely to go down well with the voters.
"Despite the government’s focus on levelling up, the NIESR found wage growth had been fastest in London. It predicted real wage growth of 7% in the capital between the end of 2019 and 2024, compared with a fall of 5% in the West Midlands."
Indeed. Minimum wage is no longer the maximum wage in many industries, especially so in London. Thanks to Brexit, unskilled employees have seen large rises in their pay, especially those who changed jobs during the pandemic.
And yet...
In its quarterly update on the state of the economy, the NIESR said the poorest tenth of the population had been especially hard hit by Britain’s cost of living crisis and would need an income boost of £4,000 a year to have the same living standards they enjoyed in the year before Covid-19 arrived.
The poorest households – hit by weak wage growth, higher debt, the need to devote more of their budgets to expensive energy, food and housing costs; and with few if any savings – would be 17% worse off by the end of 2024 than they were five years earlier. The richest households would be 5% worse off.
Sandpit imagines UK through his Tory blue specs as a tax free emigrant living outside the UK, ie fantasy.
That’s an interesting description of Ukraine!
On the substantive point, hundreds of thousands of people quit crap jobs during the pandemic, and despite a record population many of the crap employers are now short of staff.
It's worth reminding readers that Lee Anderthal is not just a gobby MP, he is Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party. So when he tells 'moaning' asylum seekers to "fuck off back to France" his role as DC is relevant. No surprise that he said it and is standing by it. But his language has not been condemned by anybody in the party, including No. 10; rather, they all seem to have endorsed his comments.
It rather suggests to me that the Tory Party has given up, if they can't be bothered appealing to the vast majority of voters who have common decency.
Hard to find anything to argue with in OGH's summary. At least for yours truly!
Morning all.
@MikeSmithson keeps taking GE2019 as the benchmark. Whilst this looks right on paper, it's an illusion and for punters it's an error. GE2019 was a one-off 'Get Brexit Done' election to unblock the jam created during the Remainer Parliament. Boris Johnson galvanised the voters against the unelectable trotskyite anti-semitic Jeremy Corbyn with the sole aim of Getting Brexit Done. Hence the December election. In many ways GE2019 was NOT a General Election.
The last proper General Election in the UK was June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament. That's your benchmark.
Bet accordingly.
p.s. I'm personally very glad that Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair.
I think I understand the point you are making - whilst the 2019 election is the status quo, its artificial. Ordinarily the Labour task would be considered politically unlikely - as we all said in the aftermath.
But if we consider the 2019 result to be the aberration, then a revision to the norm can be expected to happen as the start of any new electoral move. There are swathes of red wall seats which endless polls have shows will not just revert to Labour but will deliver them 5 figure majorities.
If we bake that 2017 reversion in, the task facing Starmer is much smaller, and much more attainable. Then we look at the two other political low tides from 2015 likely to come back in:
The absence of unionist MPs in Scotland feels like a situation that can't be sustained - so expect 20-30 seats to switch from the motorhome party. The absence of yellow MPs in rural England is already a tide rushing back in. The focus is always on Labour, but as is clear it is the LibDems who will mop up disaffected sane voters in places where "Sink the Boats" makes people feel sick.
So, we reset the Red Wall. We drain out the SNP flood. We remove the dam from the LibDems. And suddenly a thumping Tory defeat is not just possible, it feels likely. To stay in power they need to preserve all three of these artificial positions. Which politically means they need to be Janus, a task they are spectacularly failing to pull off.
Yes, I think the Tories have snookered themselves. It is hard to see any of those 3 fronts being contained next GE. While Scotland is unique, the other 2 fronts play out across most E and W constituencies. They are sociological rather than geographical waves.
Tory unpopularity with the working age population is astonishing. I doubt there’s been anything like it in the history of two-party politics in this country.
What possible reason is there at the minute for someone who works for a living to support the Tories?
Sunak has made his bed and shown that working people only exist in his eyes to be taxed ever higher to provide welfare for those who don't work. That's something you can understand from Labour, but from the Tories?
The jack boots will be on next and barbed wire being put up to intern unemployed and pensioners. Give it a rest Adolf.
Hang on. Barty is an absolutist which often translates into absurdist straw man positions - the rant about 30mph zones a perfect example. But he has a point - the status quo is broken. We *are* paying vast amounts in taxes. Where he descends into the absurdist is the suggestion that the money is going into welfare. When our welfare system grudgingly gives people living poverty assuming it pays anything at all.
We're paying record taxes, true. But its going to spivs, not on services, not on infrastructure, not on welfare. We pay lots and get little. Where does all that money go? Even if you are as high Tory and say "inefficiency" that is literally my point. Inefficiency means money is being wasted. Spent on consultants. Advisers. Middlemen. Spivs...
The problem we have is that whilst "we pay taxes and get little back" is good analysis, nobody wants to go after why that is. And propose a solution because the problem is too big and our politicians too timid.
Your jackboots analogy is one solution. Hungary have done it. France wants to do it. Spain and Germany are toying with it...
The bit in bold: it goes on debt repayments.
We have a shit-ton of debt. We need to reflate the economy to lessen the debt burden over time via inflation. But the anti-inflationary reflexes we built up in the neoliberal era prevent us from doing this. So we have problems.
That isn't true with public services. We spend ever larger amounts on schools and hospitals despite front line service provision being catastrophically starved of money.
A basic problem is that everything has been marketised. Instead of driving market-led efficiency we have endless overlapping targets and contracts and regulations. The market is a vast business by itself.
How much money did we waste creating Clinical Commissioning Groups in the NHS? Then replacing them with Integrated Care Boards? How integrated are the dozens of "integrated" boards and how many contracts do they negotiate and manage and how much is spent on administration?
Thats our problem. A fat layer of middlemen who suck the cash out of the system.
Yes and mainly the Tories chums and families etc getting the largesse.
"Despite the government’s focus on levelling up, the NIESR found wage growth had been fastest in London. It predicted real wage growth of 7% in the capital between the end of 2019 and 2024, compared with a fall of 5% in the West Midlands."
Indeed. Minimum wage is no longer the maximum wage in many industries, especially so in London. Thanks to Brexit, unskilled employees have seen large rises in their pay, especially those who changed jobs during the pandemic.
And yet...
In its quarterly update on the state of the economy, the NIESR said the poorest tenth of the population had been especially hard hit by Britain’s cost of living crisis and would need an income boost of £4,000 a year to have the same living standards they enjoyed in the year before Covid-19 arrived.
The poorest households – hit by weak wage growth, higher debt, the need to devote more of their budgets to expensive energy, food and housing costs; and with few if any savings – would be 17% worse off by the end of 2024 than they were five years earlier. The richest households would be 5% worse off.
And yet ...
Its almost as if two distinct things have happened. The pandemic, expensive food, energy etc is because of what has happened across the globe and would have happened with or without Brexit. That the cost of gas has shot up globally, and the UK relies upon gas, is not a Brexit issue.
The fact that the cost of housing is so high is a British issue, but not a Brexit issue. Build more houses to solve that one.
The single largest Brexit issue is that our government has spent the last decade concentrating on little else.
There are precious few benefits, significant ongoing costs, and a large majority of the electorate wish it had never happened.
Would we really be better off if Rees Mogg, Williamson, Truss, Patel, Bozo, Raab, Kwarteng etc had set their "talents" onto improving the NHS or education or the economy instead of Brexit?
I'd say the biggest costs of Brexit are societal division and a decline in the calibre of politicians and political debate.
Without Brexit few if any of them would have been in government.
Which is the point. They are a malign symptom of the enormous Brexit distraction.
Its quite possible, indeed probable, that many of them would have been in government without Brexit.
Almost all of them were part of the Government under Cameron pre-referendum and not backbenchers. Only Rees Mogg and Kwarteng from memory are the exceptions - and Kwarteng was considered a "rising star" pre-referendum.
If you think Brexit was a distraction, then surely you'd want to put it behind us by moving on from arguments over Europe? Doing a hokey-cokey rejoin campaign would be just as much if not more of a distraction than Brexit was.
Nice try. A look at Cameron's actual cabinet shows that to be fanciful. Osborne; May; Hammond; Gove; Fallon; Crabb; Hunt; Grayling; Greening; McLoughlin; Javid; Villiers; Truss; Clark; Letwin; Mundell; Rudd.
And who said anything about what happens next ? For now, government continues to be distracted by the ongoing and unpopular project.
The Government extends beyond the actual cabinet and includes the entire payroll vote. Almost all of those named (besides AFAIK "rising star" Kwarteng and Rees Mogg) the rest named were on the Cameron payroll vote.
There is no "ongoing and unpopular project".
Of course - but the current cabinet is almost unrecognisable compared to what was. Some of that cabinet are no longer even in the party.
And 'project' is probably being generous to the mess. Unpopular it certainly is.
Ha, I just got stopped in the street by two military officers, presumably asking what a nice young man was doing without a uniform on a sunny Wednesday morning.
Thankfully I had my passport on me, to which they smiled and let me on my way with a thumb up.
Hard to find anything to argue with in OGH's summary. At least for yours truly!
Morning all.
@MikeSmithson keeps taking GE2019 as the benchmark. Whilst this looks right on paper, it's an illusion and for punters it's an error. GE2019 was a one-off 'Get Brexit Done' election to unblock the jam created during the Remainer Parliament. Boris Johnson galvanised the voters against the unelectable trotskyite anti-semitic Jeremy Corbyn with the sole aim of Getting Brexit Done. Hence the December election. In many ways GE2019 was NOT a General Election.
The last proper General Election in the UK was June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament. That's your benchmark.
Bet accordingly.
p.s. I'm personally very glad that Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair.
I think I understand the point you are making - whilst the 2019 election is the status quo, its artificial. Ordinarily the Labour task would be considered politically unlikely - as we all said in the aftermath.
But if we consider the 2019 result to be the aberration, then a revision to the norm can be expected to happen as the start of any new electoral move. There are swathes of red wall seats which endless polls have shows will not just revert to Labour but will deliver them 5 figure majorities.
If we bake that 2017 reversion in, the task facing Starmer is much smaller, and much more attainable. Then we look at the two other political low tides from 2015 likely to come back in:
The absence of unionist MPs in Scotland feels like a situation that can't be sustained - so expect 20-30 seats to switch from the motorhome party. The absence of yellow MPs in rural England is already a tide rushing back in. The focus is always on Labour, but as is clear it is the LibDems who will mop up disaffected sane voters in places where "Sink the Boats" makes people feel sick.
So, we reset the Red Wall. We drain out the SNP flood. We remove the dam from the LibDems. And suddenly a thumping Tory defeat is not just possible, it feels likely. To stay in power they need to preserve all three of these artificial positions. Which politically means they need to be Janus, a task they are spectacularly failing to pull off.
Yes, I think the Tories have snookered themselves. It is hard to see any of those 3 fronts being contained next GE. While Scotland is unique, the other 2 fronts play out across most E and W constituencies. They are sociological rather than geographical waves.
Tory unpopularity with the working age population is astonishing. I doubt there’s been anything like it in the history of two-party politics in this country.
Yes, it is deeply concerning.
The only people they seem to look after (and protect from policy) is the retired and they've dug a hole so deep there I struggle to see how they get out now.
Pray tell how they protect the retired. Raising the pittance of the state pension , the worst in the developed world by a country mile is hardly looking after them, it is less than bare minimum.
Yes, this is something I don't get. "Rich pensioners" isn't all pensioners. Its the minority who have been able to look after themselves. Like all other welfare support our pensions are truly dire. We are an expensive country to live in but pay very low pensions or maternity or unemployment compared to countries like Denmark or Spain.
And yet, try suggesting increasing pension credit faster and state pension more slowly and wait a few seconds for the incoming barrage of arguments that we can't possibly do that......
Even that is tinkering around the edges. We need to give all taxpayers money to spend. UBI. Every pound handed out to the poorest in UBI will be spent, much of it in the local economy. We need money to circulate to create jobs and bring back shops and businesses - it used to be called capitalism, we broke it and it needs a jump start.
Taxes are bad in this country; we should look at more wealth based taxes, land value taxes, takes on trading and other stuff. We should reduce VAT, lift the lowest earners out of income tax and completely scrap how we do council tax. Taxation can be used to be anti inflationary when inflation is mostly caused by profiteering (which is happening now). If taxes on profiteering increased and the money raised directed at the poor (those who are most at risk of the effects of profiteering) there will be no incentive to profiteer.
I was listening to an interesting podcast at the weekend discussing the nature and history of rent and rent seeking (I'm a fun guy, I know) and the argument went as follows: it is argued that rent is set by the market, and the market is based on consumers and suppliers, but what happens if suppliers (in this specific podcast they discussed land, oil and housing) band together and say they'll take their ball and stop playing unless rents go up beyond what the market is actually demanding? Well, nothing - people need housing so rent can always go up even if the housing exists because only a specific class of people can own the properties; oil production can increase but because OPEC can act as a cartel they can demand that oil prices increase despite more supply than demand at certain times.
So, taking this point into mind, any taxes should primarily be aimed at rebalancing that power (whether you're on the left like me or a right wing Georgian). Landlords should not be able to constantly expect profit on their investment - some investments fail, that is the so called will of the market. Giant corporations should not be "too big to fail" nor should they be "too big to fine". Economies grow when poor people can spend money, because they do, not when rich people can sit on hoards of gold like dragons doing nothing productive.
It's worth reminding readers that Lee Anderthal is not just a gobby MP, he is Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party. So when he tells 'moaning' asylum seekers to "fuck off back to France" his role as DC is relevant. No surprise that he said it and is standing by it. But his language has not been condemned by anybody in the party, including No. 10; rather, they all seem to have endorsed his comments.
It rather suggests to me that the Tory Party has given up, if they can't be bothered appealing to the vast majority of voters who have common decency.
It's a core vote strategy, nasty party on steroids. While some centrist voters may share some of the sentiment they won't like the way it's expressed.
Hard to find anything to argue with in OGH's summary. At least for yours truly!
Morning all.
@MikeSmithson keeps taking GE2019 as the benchmark. Whilst this looks right on paper, it's an illusion and for punters it's an error. GE2019 was a one-off 'Get Brexit Done' election to unblock the jam created during the Remainer Parliament. Boris Johnson galvanised the voters against the unelectable trotskyite anti-semitic Jeremy Corbyn with the sole aim of Getting Brexit Done. Hence the December election. In many ways GE2019 was NOT a General Election.
The last proper General Election in the UK was June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament. That's your benchmark.
Bet accordingly.
p.s. I'm personally very glad that Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair.
I think I understand the point you are making - whilst the 2019 election is the status quo, its artificial. Ordinarily the Labour task would be considered politically unlikely - as we all said in the aftermath.
But if we consider the 2019 result to be the aberration, then a revision to the norm can be expected to happen as the start of any new electoral move. There are swathes of red wall seats which endless polls have shows will not just revert to Labour but will deliver them 5 figure majorities.
If we bake that 2017 reversion in, the task facing Starmer is much smaller, and much more attainable. Then we look at the two other political low tides from 2015 likely to come back in:
The absence of unionist MPs in Scotland feels like a situation that can't be sustained - so expect 20-30 seats to switch from the motorhome party. The absence of yellow MPs in rural England is already a tide rushing back in. The focus is always on Labour, but as is clear it is the LibDems who will mop up disaffected sane voters in places where "Sink the Boats" makes people feel sick.
So, we reset the Red Wall. We drain out the SNP flood. We remove the dam from the LibDems. And suddenly a thumping Tory defeat is not just possible, it feels likely. To stay in power they need to preserve all three of these artificial positions. Which politically means they need to be Janus, a task they are spectacularly failing to pull off.
Yes, I think the Tories have snookered themselves. It is hard to see any of those 3 fronts being contained next GE. While Scotland is unique, the other 2 fronts play out across most E and W constituencies. They are sociological rather than geographical waves.
Tory unpopularity with the working age population is astonishing. I doubt there’s been anything like it in the history of two-party politics in this country.
What possible reason is there at the minute for someone who works for a living to support the Tories?
Sunak has made his bed and shown that working people only exist in his eyes to be taxed ever higher to provide welfare for those who don't work. That's something you can understand from Labour, but from the Tories?
The jack boots will be on next and barbed wire being put up to intern unemployed and pensioners. Give it a rest Adolf.
Hang on. Barty is an absolutist which often translates into absurdist straw man positions - the rant about 30mph zones a perfect example. But he has a point - the status quo is broken. We *are* paying vast amounts in taxes. Where he descends into the absurdist is the suggestion that the money is going into welfare. When our welfare system grudgingly gives people living poverty assuming it pays anything at all.
We're paying record taxes, true. But its going to spivs, not on services, not on infrastructure, not on welfare. We pay lots and get little. Where does all that money go? Even if you are as high Tory and say "inefficiency" that is literally my point. Inefficiency means money is being wasted. Spent on consultants. Advisers. Middlemen. Spivs...
The problem we have is that whilst "we pay taxes and get little back" is good analysis, nobody wants to go after why that is. And propose a solution because the problem is too big and our politicians too timid.
Your jackboots analogy is one solution. Hungary have done it. France wants to do it. Spain and Germany are toying with it...
The bit in bold: it goes on debt repayments.
We have a shit-ton of debt. We need to reflate the economy to lessen the debt burden over time via inflation. But the anti-inflationary reflexes we built up in the neoliberal era prevent us from doing this. So we have problems.
That isn't true with public services. We spend ever larger amounts on schools and hospitals despite front line service provision being catastrophically starved of money.
A basic problem is that everything has been marketised. Instead of driving market-led efficiency we have endless overlapping targets and contracts and regulations. The market is a vast business by itself.
How much money did we waste creating Clinical Commissioning Groups in the NHS? Then replacing them with Integrated Care Boards? How integrated are the dozens of "integrated" boards and how many contracts do they negotiate and manage and how much is spent on administration?
Thats our problem. A fat layer of middlemen who suck the cash out of the system.
This government *is* fiscally dry, however they’ve had to increase the number of civil servants due to Brexit and they continue to stuff gold down the throat of the client vote.
I think we're starting to identify the issues on this thread.
i) Frictional, beaurocratic & administrative cost increases due to putting up trade barriers between ourselves and our nearest neighbours. ii) A culture of gold plating & empire building prevalent in the civil service - driven (certainly in part) by unintended consequences of pseudo-marketisation & i) iii) Increasing debt costs.
Altogether it means we're collectively paying more than ever for less.
It's worth reminding readers that Lee Anderthal is not just a gobby MP, he is Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party. So when he tells 'moaning' asylum seekers to "fuck off back to France" his role as DC is relevant. No surprise that he said it and is standing by it. But his language has not been condemned by anybody in the party, including No. 10; rather, they all seem to have endorsed his comments.
It rather suggests to me that the Tory Party has given up, if they can't be bothered appealing to the vast majority of voters who have common decency.
If you know nothing about the country you are governing you make Lee Anderson one of your public faces. Lee is every out-of-touch metropolitan elitist's idea of what a salt of the earth, working class, northerner is like. That he is not even a northerner is only the start of the delusion.
Have we done the “leaving the ECHR” story this morning?
We should all be concerned about that sort of rhetoric coming from the governing party. The convention and its interpretation may be imperfect in places, but one does not throw the baby out with the bath water on these things.
This feels of a level of constitutional significance that it should need cross party support to change.
"Despite the government’s focus on levelling up, the NIESR found wage growth had been fastest in London. It predicted real wage growth of 7% in the capital between the end of 2019 and 2024, compared with a fall of 5% in the West Midlands."
Indeed. Minimum wage is no longer the maximum wage in many industries, especially so in London. Thanks to Brexit, unskilled employees have seen large rises in their pay, especially those who changed jobs during the pandemic.
And yet...
In its quarterly update on the state of the economy, the NIESR said the poorest tenth of the population had been especially hard hit by Britain’s cost of living crisis and would need an income boost of £4,000 a year to have the same living standards they enjoyed in the year before Covid-19 arrived.
The poorest households – hit by weak wage growth, higher debt, the need to devote more of their budgets to expensive energy, food and housing costs; and with few if any savings – would be 17% worse off by the end of 2024 than they were five years earlier. The richest households would be 5% worse off.
Sandpit imagines UK through his Tory blue specs as a tax free emigrant living outside the UK, ie fantasy.
That’s an interesting description of Ukraine!
On the substantive point, hundreds of thousands of people quit crap jobs during the pandemic, and despite a record population many of the crap employers are now short of staff.
Hard to find anything to argue with in OGH's summary. At least for yours truly!
Morning all.
@MikeSmithson keeps taking GE2019 as the benchmark. Whilst this looks right on paper, it's an illusion and for punters it's an error. GE2019 was a one-off 'Get Brexit Done' election to unblock the jam created during the Remainer Parliament. Boris Johnson galvanised the voters against the unelectable trotskyite anti-semitic Jeremy Corbyn with the sole aim of Getting Brexit Done. Hence the December election. In many ways GE2019 was NOT a General Election.
The last proper General Election in the UK was June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament. That's your benchmark.
Bet accordingly.
p.s. I'm personally very glad that Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair.
I think I understand the point you are making - whilst the 2019 election is the status quo, its artificial. Ordinarily the Labour task would be considered politically unlikely - as we all said in the aftermath.
But if we consider the 2019 result to be the aberration, then a revision to the norm can be expected to happen as the start of any new electoral move. There are swathes of red wall seats which endless polls have shows will not just revert to Labour but will deliver them 5 figure majorities.
If we bake that 2017 reversion in, the task facing Starmer is much smaller, and much more attainable. Then we look at the two other political low tides from 2015 likely to come back in:
The absence of unionist MPs in Scotland feels like a situation that can't be sustained - so expect 20-30 seats to switch from the motorhome party. The absence of yellow MPs in rural England is already a tide rushing back in. The focus is always on Labour, but as is clear it is the LibDems who will mop up disaffected sane voters in places where "Sink the Boats" makes people feel sick.
So, we reset the Red Wall. We drain out the SNP flood. We remove the dam from the LibDems. And suddenly a thumping Tory defeat is not just possible, it feels likely. To stay in power they need to preserve all three of these artificial positions. Which politically means they need to be Janus, a task they are spectacularly failing to pull off.
Yes, I think the Tories have snookered themselves. It is hard to see any of those 3 fronts being contained next GE. While Scotland is unique, the other 2 fronts play out across most E and W constituencies. They are sociological rather than geographical waves.
Tory unpopularity with the working age population is astonishing. I doubt there’s been anything like it in the history of two-party politics in this country.
What possible reason is there at the minute for someone who works for a living to support the Tories?
Sunak has made his bed and shown that working people only exist in his eyes to be taxed ever higher to provide welfare for those who don't work. That's something you can understand from Labour, but from the Tories?
The jack boots will be on next and barbed wire being put up to intern unemployed and pensioners. Give it a rest Adolf.
Hang on. Barty is an absolutist which often translates into absurdist straw man positions - the rant about 30mph zones a perfect example. But he has a point - the status quo is broken. We *are* paying vast amounts in taxes. Where he descends into the absurdist is the suggestion that the money is going into welfare. When our welfare system grudgingly gives people living poverty assuming it pays anything at all.
We're paying record taxes, true. But its going to spivs, not on services, not on infrastructure, not on welfare. We pay lots and get little. Where does all that money go? Even if you are as high Tory and say "inefficiency" that is literally my point. Inefficiency means money is being wasted. Spent on consultants. Advisers. Middlemen. Spivs...
The problem we have is that whilst "we pay taxes and get little back" is good analysis, nobody wants to go after why that is. And propose a solution because the problem is too big and our politicians too timid.
Your jackboots analogy is one solution. Hungary have done it. France wants to do it. Spain and Germany are toying with it...
The bit in bold: it goes on debt repayments.
We have a shit-ton of debt. We need to reflate the economy to lessen the debt burden over time via inflation. But the anti-inflationary reflexes we built up in the neoliberal era prevent us from doing this. So we have problems.
According to the Commons Library in 2022/23 net debt interest was £111 billion
An utterly ginormous sum and why future governments will not have any money to spend on their projects
Hugely depressing
Well, yes in the main, but normalised interest rates are good for savers and rising bond yields may improve pensions and annuities significantly.
Hard to find anything to argue with in OGH's summary. At least for yours truly!
Morning all.
@MikeSmithson keeps taking GE2019 as the benchmark. Whilst this looks right on paper, it's an illusion and for punters it's an error. GE2019 was a one-off 'Get Brexit Done' election to unblock the jam created during the Remainer Parliament. Boris Johnson galvanised the voters against the unelectable trotskyite anti-semitic Jeremy Corbyn with the sole aim of Getting Brexit Done. Hence the December election. In many ways GE2019 was NOT a General Election.
The last proper General Election in the UK was June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament. That's your benchmark.
Bet accordingly.
p.s. I'm personally very glad that Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair.
I think I understand the point you are making - whilst the 2019 election is the status quo, its artificial. Ordinarily the Labour task would be considered politically unlikely - as we all said in the aftermath.
But if we consider the 2019 result to be the aberration, then a revision to the norm can be expected to happen as the start of any new electoral move. There are swathes of red wall seats which endless polls have shows will not just revert to Labour but will deliver them 5 figure majorities.
If we bake that 2017 reversion in, the task facing Starmer is much smaller, and much more attainable. Then we look at the two other political low tides from 2015 likely to come back in:
The absence of unionist MPs in Scotland feels like a situation that can't be sustained - so expect 20-30 seats to switch from the motorhome party. The absence of yellow MPs in rural England is already a tide rushing back in. The focus is always on Labour, but as is clear it is the LibDems who will mop up disaffected sane voters in places where "Sink the Boats" makes people feel sick.
So, we reset the Red Wall. We drain out the SNP flood. We remove the dam from the LibDems. And suddenly a thumping Tory defeat is not just possible, it feels likely. To stay in power they need to preserve all three of these artificial positions. Which politically means they need to be Janus, a task they are spectacularly failing to pull off.
Yes, I think the Tories have snookered themselves. It is hard to see any of those 3 fronts being contained next GE. While Scotland is unique, the other 2 fronts play out across most E and W constituencies. They are sociological rather than geographical waves.
I get the objection. "Labour can't win that many seats". And from a standing start that would be true. But as I pointed out: 1. Red Wall Reversion to lifetime voting habits. Scores of seats flip blue to red - 2 points for each 2. Scottish independence tide reverts now they realise Bully's Star Prize was a speedboat, and they live in Kilmarnock, and besides which the party have nicked the speedboat. 20-30 seats flip orange to red - 2 points for each 3. Blue wall revulsion to "sink the boats" tendencies. Another 20-30 seats to flip blue to yellow - 1 point each as on paper the LDs would be in opposition to Labour, but we know in reality every party bar the DUP are ABC
And that is just the reversion phase of the election. Then we go after the seats not involved in these three tidal movements, where we're not just resetting the 2017 and 2015 tides but pushing Red and Blue into places not won in a while. With a government this unpopular and unhinged, projections show all kinds of results are doable. Whilst I dismiss some of the more excitable predictions, you can see how it is achievable.
Achievable. Not guaranteed.
Not au fait with Scottish Politics for sure , SNP does not equal Independence support. It si still at teh 50% mark despite their besyt efforts. People may give SNP a bloody nose but Independence is not going away.
Supporting independence as an ideal and voting for a unionist party is what will happen to a lot of voters. The SNP tide is receding and at Westminster there aren't alternatives.
As long as the UK lurches along in its broken state, independence will remain a direct goal for many - I know that. But politically it is in retreat due to the bungling corruption of the SNP.
Sadly I have to agree with you, SNP have trashed the short term chances.
That was my point. Whilst the 2014 referendum was No, the electoral tide saw a succession of previously unthinkable SNP successes. In 2023 further successes are simply unthinkable. And as they recede electorally so does the immediate path to independence.
I might be an English incomer, but I am sympathetic to the nationalist cause. Scotland *could* thrive as an independent nation. But Brexit has shown how half-based and misguided promises do more damage than good. The reason for independence can't just be because Scotland. The answer to pensions and currency and economy can't be England will pay.
Put meat on the bones - why the UK is broken and how an independent Scotland would manage the immediate challenges and then progress towards a positive vision for a different future and it can come back.
Hard to find anything to argue with in OGH's summary. At least for yours truly!
Morning all.
@MikeSmithson keeps taking GE2019 as the benchmark. Whilst this looks right on paper, it's an illusion and for punters it's an error. GE2019 was a one-off 'Get Brexit Done' election to unblock the jam created during the Remainer Parliament. Boris Johnson galvanised the voters against the unelectable trotskyite anti-semitic Jeremy Corbyn with the sole aim of Getting Brexit Done. Hence the December election. In many ways GE2019 was NOT a General Election.
The last proper General Election in the UK was June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament. That's your benchmark.
Bet accordingly.
p.s. I'm personally very glad that Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair.
I think I understand the point you are making - whilst the 2019 election is the status quo, its artificial. Ordinarily the Labour task would be considered politically unlikely - as we all said in the aftermath.
But if we consider the 2019 result to be the aberration, then a revision to the norm can be expected to happen as the start of any new electoral move. There are swathes of red wall seats which endless polls have shows will not just revert to Labour but will deliver them 5 figure majorities.
If we bake that 2017 reversion in, the task facing Starmer is much smaller, and much more attainable. Then we look at the two other political low tides from 2015 likely to come back in:
The absence of unionist MPs in Scotland feels like a situation that can't be sustained - so expect 20-30 seats to switch from the motorhome party. The absence of yellow MPs in rural England is already a tide rushing back in. The focus is always on Labour, but as is clear it is the LibDems who will mop up disaffected sane voters in places where "Sink the Boats" makes people feel sick.
So, we reset the Red Wall. We drain out the SNP flood. We remove the dam from the LibDems. And suddenly a thumping Tory defeat is not just possible, it feels likely. To stay in power they need to preserve all three of these artificial positions. Which politically means they need to be Janus, a task they are spectacularly failing to pull off.
Yes, I think the Tories have snookered themselves. It is hard to see any of those 3 fronts being contained next GE. While Scotland is unique, the other 2 fronts play out across most E and W constituencies. They are sociological rather than geographical waves.
Tory unpopularity with the working age population is astonishing. I doubt there’s been anything like it in the history of two-party politics in this country.
What possible reason is there at the minute for someone who works for a living to support the Tories?
Sunak has made his bed and shown that working people only exist in his eyes to be taxed ever higher to provide welfare for those who don't work. That's something you can understand from Labour, but from the Tories?
The jack boots will be on next and barbed wire being put up to intern unemployed and pensioners. Give it a rest Adolf.
Hang on. Barty is an absolutist which often translates into absurdist straw man positions - the rant about 30mph zones a perfect example. But he has a point - the status quo is broken. We *are* paying vast amounts in taxes. Where he descends into the absurdist is the suggestion that the money is going into welfare. When our welfare system grudgingly gives people living poverty assuming it pays anything at all.
We're paying record taxes, true. But its going to spivs, not on services, not on infrastructure, not on welfare. We pay lots and get little. Where does all that money go? Even if you are as high Tory and say "inefficiency" that is literally my point. Inefficiency means money is being wasted. Spent on consultants. Advisers. Middlemen. Spivs...
The problem we have is that whilst "we pay taxes and get little back" is good analysis, nobody wants to go after why that is. And propose a solution because the problem is too big and our politicians too timid.
Your jackboots analogy is one solution. Hungary have done it. France wants to do it. Spain and Germany are toying with it...
The bit in bold: it goes on debt repayments.
We have a shit-ton of debt. We need to reflate the economy to lessen the debt burden over time via inflation. But the anti-inflationary reflexes we built up in the neoliberal era prevent us from doing this. So we have problems.
That isn't true with public services. We spend ever larger amounts on schools and hospitals despite front line service provision being catastrophically starved of money.
A basic problem is that everything has been marketised. Instead of driving market-led efficiency we have endless overlapping targets and contracts and regulations. The market is a vast business by itself.
How much money did we waste creating Clinical Commissioning Groups in the NHS? Then replacing them with Integrated Care Boards? How integrated are the dozens of "integrated" boards and how many contracts do they negotiate and manage and how much is spent on administration?
Thats our problem. A fat layer of middlemen who suck the cash out of the system.
That and house prices.
The pointless middleman thing has been around for ages- it's there in the Golgafrincham B Ark, and Hitchhikers was first written in 1978. But it does seem to have got worse and more expensive as a phenomenon.
Hard to find anything to argue with in OGH's summary. At least for yours truly!
Morning all.
@MikeSmithson keeps taking GE2019 as the benchmark. Whilst this looks right on paper, it's an illusion and for punters it's an error. GE2019 was a one-off 'Get Brexit Done' election to unblock the jam created during the Remainer Parliament. Boris Johnson galvanised the voters against the unelectable trotskyite anti-semitic Jeremy Corbyn with the sole aim of Getting Brexit Done. Hence the December election. In many ways GE2019 was NOT a General Election.
The last proper General Election in the UK was June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament. That's your benchmark.
Bet accordingly.
p.s. I'm personally very glad that Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair.
I think I understand the point you are making - whilst the 2019 election is the status quo, its artificial. Ordinarily the Labour task would be considered politically unlikely - as we all said in the aftermath.
But if we consider the 2019 result to be the aberration, then a revision to the norm can be expected to happen as the start of any new electoral move. There are swathes of red wall seats which endless polls have shows will not just revert to Labour but will deliver them 5 figure majorities.
If we bake that 2017 reversion in, the task facing Starmer is much smaller, and much more attainable. Then we look at the two other political low tides from 2015 likely to come back in:
The absence of unionist MPs in Scotland feels like a situation that can't be sustained - so expect 20-30 seats to switch from the motorhome party. The absence of yellow MPs in rural England is already a tide rushing back in. The focus is always on Labour, but as is clear it is the LibDems who will mop up disaffected sane voters in places where "Sink the Boats" makes people feel sick.
So, we reset the Red Wall. We drain out the SNP flood. We remove the dam from the LibDems. And suddenly a thumping Tory defeat is not just possible, it feels likely. To stay in power they need to preserve all three of these artificial positions. Which politically means they need to be Janus, a task they are spectacularly failing to pull off.
Yes, I think the Tories have snookered themselves. It is hard to see any of those 3 fronts being contained next GE. While Scotland is unique, the other 2 fronts play out across most E and W constituencies. They are sociological rather than geographical waves.
Tory unpopularity with the working age population is astonishing. I doubt there’s been anything like it in the history of two-party politics in this country.
What possible reason is there at the minute for someone who works for a living to support the Tories?
Sunak has made his bed and shown that working people only exist in his eyes to be taxed ever higher to provide welfare for those who don't work. That's something you can understand from Labour, but from the Tories?
The jack boots will be on next and barbed wire being put up to intern unemployed and pensioners. Give it a rest Adolf.
Hang on. Barty is an absolutist which often translates into absurdist straw man positions - the rant about 30mph zones a perfect example. But he has a point - the status quo is broken. We *are* paying vast amounts in taxes. Where he descends into the absurdist is the suggestion that the money is going into welfare. When our welfare system grudgingly gives people living poverty assuming it pays anything at all.
We're paying record taxes, true. But its going to spivs, not on services, not on infrastructure, not on welfare. We pay lots and get little. Where does all that money go? Even if you are as high Tory and say "inefficiency" that is literally my point. Inefficiency means money is being wasted. Spent on consultants. Advisers. Middlemen. Spivs...
The problem we have is that whilst "we pay taxes and get little back" is good analysis, nobody wants to go after why that is. And propose a solution because the problem is too big and our politicians too timid.
Your jackboots analogy is one solution. Hungary have done it. France wants to do it. Spain and Germany are toying with it...
Interestingly the idea that all our taxes are going on "spivs" is a bit like Tory extremists who think all our taxes are going on "diversity officers" etc
I never said all our money is going on welfare. What I said, is that we now spend more on welfare than we spend on all public sector employees put together.
That's right, we spend more on welfare than we spend on every doctor, nurse, police officer, prison officer, teacher and more combined. Including any spivs the state hires.
And those on welfare are getting a double-digit pay rise, while those who work for a living for the state are not.
That is where our money is going. Well some of it.
Between welfare, people working for the state and debt interest out of every £5 the state spends of our taxes approximately £2 goes on welfare, £2 goes on people working for a living (slightly less than the welfare amount, but we're rounding here), and £1 goes on debt interest.
So only 40% of that expenditure is 'productive', even if you generously assume all public sector employees are productive.
You can eliminate every spiv, or every diversity officer, or whatever other prejudice you have. But when between those three issues we spend 60% of our taxes on welfare and debt interest then we have a problem.
Especially when the government is increasing annually the amount we spend on welfare and debt interest, and reducing annually the amount we spend on wages.
PS who said anything about "people living in poverty". Very little of our welfare system goes to people living in poverty. Welfare != support for poverty, that is the problem.
Hard to find anything to argue with in OGH's summary. At least for yours truly!
Morning all.
@MikeSmithson keeps taking GE2019 as the benchmark. Whilst this looks right on paper, it's an illusion and for punters it's an error. GE2019 was a one-off 'Get Brexit Done' election to unblock the jam created during the Remainer Parliament. Boris Johnson galvanised the voters against the unelectable trotskyite anti-semitic Jeremy Corbyn with the sole aim of Getting Brexit Done. Hence the December election. In many ways GE2019 was NOT a General Election.
The last proper General Election in the UK was June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament. That's your benchmark.
Bet accordingly.
p.s. I'm personally very glad that Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair.
I think I understand the point you are making - whilst the 2019 election is the status quo, its artificial. Ordinarily the Labour task would be considered politically unlikely - as we all said in the aftermath.
But if we consider the 2019 result to be the aberration, then a revision to the norm can be expected to happen as the start of any new electoral move. There are swathes of red wall seats which endless polls have shows will not just revert to Labour but will deliver them 5 figure majorities.
If we bake that 2017 reversion in, the task facing Starmer is much smaller, and much more attainable. Then we look at the two other political low tides from 2015 likely to come back in:
The absence of unionist MPs in Scotland feels like a situation that can't be sustained - so expect 20-30 seats to switch from the motorhome party. The absence of yellow MPs in rural England is already a tide rushing back in. The focus is always on Labour, but as is clear it is the LibDems who will mop up disaffected sane voters in places where "Sink the Boats" makes people feel sick.
So, we reset the Red Wall. We drain out the SNP flood. We remove the dam from the LibDems. And suddenly a thumping Tory defeat is not just possible, it feels likely. To stay in power they need to preserve all three of these artificial positions. Which politically means they need to be Janus, a task they are spectacularly failing to pull off.
Yes, I think the Tories have snookered themselves. It is hard to see any of those 3 fronts being contained next GE. While Scotland is unique, the other 2 fronts play out across most E and W constituencies. They are sociological rather than geographical waves.
I get the objection. "Labour can't win that many seats". And from a standing start that would be true. But as I pointed out: 1. Red Wall Reversion to lifetime voting habits. Scores of seats flip blue to red - 2 points for each 2. Scottish independence tide reverts now they realise Bully's Star Prize was a speedboat, and they live in Kilmarnock, and besides which the party have nicked the speedboat. 20-30 seats flip orange to red - 2 points for each 3. Blue wall revulsion to "sink the boats" tendencies. Another 20-30 seats to flip blue to yellow - 1 point each as on paper the LDs would be in opposition to Labour, but we know in reality every party bar the DUP are ABC
And that is just the reversion phase of the election. Then we go after the seats not involved in these three tidal movements, where we're not just resetting the 2017 and 2015 tides but pushing Red and Blue into places not won in a while. With a government this unpopular and unhinged, projections show all kinds of results are doable. Whilst I dismiss some of the more excitable predictions, you can see how it is achievable.
Achievable. Not guaranteed.
Not au fait with Scottish Politics for sure , SNP does not equal Independence support. It si still at teh 50% mark despite their besyt efforts. People may give SNP a bloody nose but Independence is not going away.
Supporting independence as an ideal and voting for a unionist party is what will happen to a lot of voters. The SNP tide is receding and at Westminster there aren't alternatives.
As long as the UK lurches along in its broken state, independence will remain a direct goal for many - I know that. But politically it is in retreat due to the bungling corruption of the SNP.
Sadly I have to agree with you, SNP have trashed the short term chances.
That was my point. Whilst the 2014 referendum was No, the electoral tide saw a succession of previously unthinkable SNP successes. In 2023 further successes are simply unthinkable. And as they recede electorally so does the immediate path to independence.
I might be an English incomer, but I am sympathetic to the nationalist cause. Scotland *could* thrive as an independent nation. But Brexit has shown how half-based and misguided promises do more damage than good. The reason for independence can't just be because Scotland. The answer to pensions and currency and economy can't be England will pay.
Put meat on the bones - why the UK is broken and how an independent Scotland would manage the immediate challenges and then progress towards a positive vision for a different future and it can come back.
Unfortunately the current SNP are a carbon copy of the Tories , all the dross promoted, family and friends employed, all talent sidelined. They are milking it and will need to be shoehorned out , bankruptcy beckons once they get a kicking at WM election. However London labour sockpuppets are not eth answer for us, Sarwar is a real dud.
The Conservatives and Labour will always be the two main parties... until they are not.
Time was when: ...every boy and every gal That’s born into the world alive Is either a little Liberal Or else a little Conservative!
Neither party has a divine right to compete for power; it's not inconceivable that the LDs replace the Tories permanently (until the next change).
The oddness of the current polling is that we keep getting mad predictions of Labour winning everything everywhere. Supposedly that Channel 4 Poll last night had Labour taking Richmond off Sunak.
The electorate have shown they are well up for tactical voting. There is no mass desire for Sunak in the way there was for Blair. But there is a mass demand to get shut of this government. And people showing that they are motivated and well informed about how to vote to bring that about.
If there truly was a Tory collapse, surely there would be scores more LibDems elected rather than Labour winning Richmond. Some Greens too. But in what gets simplified as a two party choice the pollsters interpret national polls nationally instead of looking at reality.
Compare and contrast the LD vote in a seat we're the ABC choice in vs a seat where its Labour. In one seat we pick up a 5 figure majority, In the other seat we lose our deposit. That is what we can expect in the GE - Labour and LD candidates winning outrageous seats whilst their colleagues elsewhere lose their deposit.
Forget UNS.
All sounds entirely sensible, until you remember how poorly the LDs have performed at national elections since 2010.
Which is where Dave'n'George were smarter than the current team.
If Lib and Lab take potshots at each other (2015 due to coalition fallout, 2019 due to the awfulness of Jez 2.0), Conservatives can do well without too much difficulty.
By being so awful, the 2019-now government has made it clear to the red and yellow teams where they should be aiming their fire. And that's good for the Lib Dems in the 50(?) seats they can put on a decent show in, and good for Labour everywhere else in England.
Damned with faint praise there, much?
Electorally the current Tory team are simply not up to it. Activists locally getting restless. Suspect another bad set of locals would be Rishi's last.
May 24 is much too far into the endgame for a putsch.
If May 2024 shows Tory MPs down to the 91st safest (as per recent polling) losing their seats, 24 hours would be time enough.
It takes 24 seconds for a PM to call a General Election.
You know that the constitutional advice on a PM requesting a dissolution in the event of his imminent ousting is that it won't be accepted, right?
No, I didn't know that. I do know the Lascelles convention if that is what you mean, which states that refusal is an OPTION iff
1. the existing Parliament is still "vital, viable, and capable of doing its job", 2. a general election would be "detrimental to the national economy", and 3. the sovereign could "rely on finding another prime minister who could govern for a reasonable period with a working majority in the House of Commons".
1 and 2 LOL, to satisfy 3 you're going to have to have pre-coronated someone again.
1 is met, there is a majority Government.
2 is no longer part of the Convention AFAIK.
3 no need for a pre-coronation, the convention is that governments can undergo leadership campaigns while in office.
If the PM were ousted and a majority of the Commons were willing to have the Deputy PM (currently Oliver Dowden) or someone else as interim PM until the end of the leadership campaign, then Lascelles condition 3 would be met too.
On 1, it doesn't say "there is a majority" it says something different
I don't see what mechanism there is for amendment of the principles short of a further letter from Senex. What are you referring to?
The problem is, R granting the request is the default. You are suggesting he be asked to depart from precedent and go out of his way to further the interests of one faction in one political party. Not going to happen.
A majority of the Commons is one that is viable and capable of doing its job.
The Cabinet Office maintains the principles and the second was dropped from its guidance thirty years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lascelles_Principles Historian Peter Hennessy stated in 1994 that the second of the three conditions had since been "dropped from the canon", being no longer included in internal Cabinet Office guidance.[4]
R doesn't have to further any interests of any faction, he has to follow the guidance as it exists from the Cabinet Office, in order to stay out of political decisions.
A necessary, not a sufficient condition. If Sir Reg had meant a majority he would have said so.
And it doesn't matter. HM has to be positively satisfied on all points to even consider refusing a dissolution. All it takes is one Sunakite MP to suggest by back channels - say, a note thrust into the Equerry's stocking-top - that he and 30 of his mates will be voting with the oppo from here on it in protest against the ousting - and that creates too much doubt for him to refuse.
It's worth reminding readers that Lee Anderthal is not just a gobby MP, he is Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party. So when he tells 'moaning' asylum seekers to "fuck off back to France" his role as DC is relevant. No surprise that he said it and is standing by it. But his language has not been condemned by anybody in the party, including No. 10; rather, they all seem to have endorsed his comments.
It rather suggests to me that the Tory Party has given up, if they can't be bothered appealing to the vast majority of voters who have common decency.
It's a core vote strategy, nasty party on steroids. While some centrist voters may share some of the sentiment they won't like the way it's expressed.
Well yes, that was sort of my point. No. 10 could have come out and said that while they agree with the general sentiment, they strongly disagree with the inappropriate language used by Anderson. But they didn't, and nor did any other Minister.
There will be fireworks at the Labour Party conference this year! The activist base definitely won’t be approving of the change in stance, even if it’s the sensible thing to do.
I know literally hundreds of Labour activists (do you?). None of them are raising this. There will be a row about PR, since the constituencies and some unions favour it and the leadership doesn't want to be pinned down (on that or anything else). Otherwise I'll be surprised if there are fireworks on anything. The party is boringly focused on winning, in the manner of smokers who have had a bout of lung disease - we wish we could have a puff, but we suppose we'd better not.
I’ll admit that you know a lot more Labour activists than I do
Do you think that the hardcore gender activists will move towards the Greens and LDs, but perhaps vote Lab tactically at the election?
Yes, exactly (though more Green that LD). And "perhaps" is right - some will go BJo and vote Green regardless. Generally the LibLab electorate is pretty much up for tactical voting but the Green vote much less so. The Green and RefUK voting intentions are rather similar in that way - both express near-terminal frustration with the mainstream options, but some will be persuadable.
Not sure how many hardcore gender activists there are, but the same applies to hardcore activists on other fronts. But there's a big chink of activists like me - actually very left wing in some ways, but also pragmatic. We need to win this one and govern cautiously, and we can argue about details in the second term.
Outside of "not being the Conservatives" - what is SKS's Labour party offering you as someone who is "actually very left wing in some ways"?
Right now, very little. But not being a government dedicated solely to hard right right culture war rhetoric while hollowing out the economy is a decent start. A first term Labour government has to be about taking the quick wins where they are available - planning reform, a closer relationship with the EU, much tighter regulation of privatised utilities etc - and doing the least possible damage elsewhere. Build the foundations for deeper transformation. A Tory opposition going full-on GOP will buy the time necessary. Of course, the Tories may not go even further down the rabbit hole if they end up losing the election, but looking at the realistic candidates for leadership that seems unlikely.
The problem I have is that SKS is not offering that, and why should I believe they would do that? Even if he ran on those "quick wins" - I cannot believe a word he says; he campaigned on one thing in the Lab leadership election and has run the party the exact opposite. Policies are proposed and u-turns occur within months. Good stuff, like Milliband's environmental spending plans, get briefed against by his staff and slowly whittled away to nothing in the name of "financial rules" which is just austerity 2.0
Where comes this belief that once in government this mantle of centrism will be shed and a centre-left or even left wing government will emerge? Where is the evidence that SKS and his team even have that as a desire? It just seems like cope - a reason other than "just not the Tories" to vote for Labour.
A huge explosion was reported in Zagorskiy Optical and Mechanical plant near Moscow
The factory had contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defense. It is part of Shvabe Holding, which is producing sights, thermal imagers, laser rangefinders, and other similar products. https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1689192323588947968
The Conservatives and Labour will always be the two main parties... until they are not.
Time was when: ...every boy and every gal That’s born into the world alive Is either a little Liberal Or else a little Conservative!
Neither party has a divine right to compete for power; it's not inconceivable that the LDs replace the Tories permanently (until the next change).
The oddness of the current polling is that we keep getting mad predictions of Labour winning everything everywhere. Supposedly that Channel 4 Poll last night had Labour taking Richmond off Sunak.
The electorate have shown they are well up for tactical voting. There is no mass desire for Sunak in the way there was for Blair. But there is a mass demand to get shut of this government. And people showing that they are motivated and well informed about how to vote to bring that about.
If there truly was a Tory collapse, surely there would be scores more LibDems elected rather than Labour winning Richmond. Some Greens too. But in what gets simplified as a two party choice the pollsters interpret national polls nationally instead of looking at reality.
Compare and contrast the LD vote in a seat we're the ABC choice in vs a seat where its Labour. In one seat we pick up a 5 figure majority, In the other seat we lose our deposit. That is what we can expect in the GE - Labour and LD candidates winning outrageous seats whilst their colleagues elsewhere lose their deposit.
Forget UNS.
All sounds entirely sensible, until you remember how poorly the LDs have performed at national elections since 2010.
Which is where Dave'n'George were smarter than the current team.
If Lib and Lab take potshots at each other (2015 due to coalition fallout, 2019 due to the awfulness of Jez 2.0), Conservatives can do well without too much difficulty.
By being so awful, the 2019-now government has made it clear to the red and yellow teams where they should be aiming their fire. And that's good for the Lib Dems in the 50(?) seats they can put on a decent show in, and good for Labour everywhere else in England.
Damned with faint praise there, much?
Electorally the current Tory team are simply not up to it. Activists locally getting restless. Suspect another bad set of locals would be Rishi's last.
May 24 is much too far into the endgame for a putsch.
If May 2024 shows Tory MPs down to the 91st safest (as per recent polling) losing their seats, 24 hours would be time enough.
It takes 24 seconds for a PM to call a General Election.
You know that the constitutional advice on a PM requesting a dissolution in the event of his imminent ousting is that it won't be accepted, right?
No, I didn't know that. I do know the Lascelles convention if that is what you mean, which states that refusal is an OPTION iff
1. the existing Parliament is still "vital, viable, and capable of doing its job", 2. a general election would be "detrimental to the national economy", and 3. the sovereign could "rely on finding another prime minister who could govern for a reasonable period with a working majority in the House of Commons".
1 and 2 LOL, to satisfy 3 you're going to have to have pre-coronated someone again.
1 is met, there is a majority Government.
2 is no longer part of the Convention AFAIK.
3 no need for a pre-coronation, the convention is that governments can undergo leadership campaigns while in office.
If the PM were ousted and a majority of the Commons were willing to have the Deputy PM (currently Oliver Dowden) or someone else as interim PM until the end of the leadership campaign, then Lascelles condition 3 would be met too.
On 1, it doesn't say "there is a majority" it says something different
I don't see what mechanism there is for amendment of the principles short of a further letter from Senex. What are you referring to?
The problem is, R granting the request is the default. You are suggesting he be asked to depart from precedent and go out of his way to further the interests of one faction in one political party. Not going to happen.
A majority of the Commons is one that is viable and capable of doing its job.
The Cabinet Office maintains the principles and the second was dropped from its guidance thirty years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lascelles_Principles Historian Peter Hennessy stated in 1994 that the second of the three conditions had since been "dropped from the canon", being no longer included in internal Cabinet Office guidance.[4]
R doesn't have to further any interests of any faction, he has to follow the guidance as it exists from the Cabinet Office, in order to stay out of political decisions.
A necessary, not a sufficient condition. If Sir Reg had meant a majority he would have said so.
And it doesn't matter. HM has to be positively satisfied on all points to even consider refusing a dissolution. All it takes is one Sunakite MP to suggest by back channels - say, a note thrust into the Equerry's stocking-top - that he and 30 of his mates will be voting with the oppo from here on it in protest against the ousting - and that creates too much doubt for him to refuse.
You're wrong.
HM has to follow his guidance. If the guidance is that the PM no longer commands a majority of the Commons, but someone else does, then that someone else will be invited to Downing Street to form a new government.
30 backbenchers can say what they like, unless they resign the whip they are counted in the government party and that there is a majority of the Commons to back the new PM.
Hard to find anything to argue with in OGH's summary. At least for yours truly!
Morning all.
@MikeSmithson keeps taking GE2019 as the benchmark. Whilst this looks right on paper, it's an illusion and for punters it's an error. GE2019 was a one-off 'Get Brexit Done' election to unblock the jam created during the Remainer Parliament. Boris Johnson galvanised the voters against the unelectable trotskyite anti-semitic Jeremy Corbyn with the sole aim of Getting Brexit Done. Hence the December election. In many ways GE2019 was NOT a General Election.
The last proper General Election in the UK was June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament. That's your benchmark.
Bet accordingly.
p.s. I'm personally very glad that Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair.
I think I understand the point you are making - whilst the 2019 election is the status quo, its artificial. Ordinarily the Labour task would be considered politically unlikely - as we all said in the aftermath.
But if we consider the 2019 result to be the aberration, then a revision to the norm can be expected to happen as the start of any new electoral move. There are swathes of red wall seats which endless polls have shows will not just revert to Labour but will deliver them 5 figure majorities.
If we bake that 2017 reversion in, the task facing Starmer is much smaller, and much more attainable. Then we look at the two other political low tides from 2015 likely to come back in:
The absence of unionist MPs in Scotland feels like a situation that can't be sustained - so expect 20-30 seats to switch from the motorhome party. The absence of yellow MPs in rural England is already a tide rushing back in. The focus is always on Labour, but as is clear it is the LibDems who will mop up disaffected sane voters in places where "Sink the Boats" makes people feel sick.
So, we reset the Red Wall. We drain out the SNP flood. We remove the dam from the LibDems. And suddenly a thumping Tory defeat is not just possible, it feels likely. To stay in power they need to preserve all three of these artificial positions. Which politically means they need to be Janus, a task they are spectacularly failing to pull off.
Yes, I think the Tories have snookered themselves. It is hard to see any of those 3 fronts being contained next GE. While Scotland is unique, the other 2 fronts play out across most E and W constituencies. They are sociological rather than geographical waves.
Tory unpopularity with the working age population is astonishing. I doubt there’s been anything like it in the history of two-party politics in this country.
What possible reason is there at the minute for someone who works for a living to support the Tories?
Sunak has made his bed and shown that working people only exist in his eyes to be taxed ever higher to provide welfare for those who don't work. That's something you can understand from Labour, but from the Tories?
The jack boots will be on next and barbed wire being put up to intern unemployed and pensioners. Give it a rest Adolf.
Hang on. Barty is an absolutist which often translates into absurdist straw man positions - the rant about 30mph zones a perfect example. But he has a point - the status quo is broken. We *are* paying vast amounts in taxes. Where he descends into the absurdist is the suggestion that the money is going into welfare. When our welfare system grudgingly gives people living poverty assuming it pays anything at all.
We're paying record taxes, true. But its going to spivs, not on services, not on infrastructure, not on welfare. We pay lots and get little. Where does all that money go? Even if you are as high Tory and say "inefficiency" that is literally my point. Inefficiency means money is being wasted. Spent on consultants. Advisers. Middlemen. Spivs...
The problem we have is that whilst "we pay taxes and get little back" is good analysis, nobody wants to go after why that is. And propose a solution because the problem is too big and our politicians too timid.
Your jackboots analogy is one solution. Hungary have done it. France wants to do it. Spain and Germany are toying with it...
Interestingly the idea that all our taxes are going on "spivs" is a bit like Tory extremists who think all our taxes are going on "diversity officers" etc
I never said all our money is going on welfare. What I said, is that we now spend more on welfare than we spend on all public sector employees put together.
That's right, we spend more on welfare than we spend on every doctor, nurse, police officer, prison officer, teacher and more combined. Including any spivs the state hires.
And those on welfare are getting a double-digit pay rise, while those who work for a living for the state are not.
That is where our money is going. Well some of it.
Between welfare, people working for the state and debt interest out of every £5 the state spends of our taxes approximately £2 goes on welfare, £2 goes on people working for a living (slightly less than the welfare amount, but we're rounding here), and £1 goes on debt interest.
So only 40% of that expenditure is 'productive', even if you generously assume all public sector employees are productive.
You can eliminate every spiv, or every diversity officer, or whatever other prejudice you have. But when between those three issues we spend 60% of our taxes on welfare and debt interest then we have a problem.
Especially when the government is increasing annually the amount we spend on welfare and debt interest, and reducing annually the amount we spend on wages.
PS who said anything about "people living in poverty". Very little of our welfare system goes to people living in poverty. Welfare != support for poverty, that is the problem.
Oh Dear , you don't even realise that benefits & pensions are spent in the economy as opposed to the billions the spivs take and send to tax havens etc. Explain why the £2 on workers is productive and yet the £2 on pensions/benefits is not, give us another laugh. You really don't have a clue.
Hard to find anything to argue with in OGH's summary. At least for yours truly!
Morning all.
@MikeSmithson keeps taking GE2019 as the benchmark. Whilst this looks right on paper, it's an illusion and for punters it's an error. GE2019 was a one-off 'Get Brexit Done' election to unblock the jam created during the Remainer Parliament. Boris Johnson galvanised the voters against the unelectable trotskyite anti-semitic Jeremy Corbyn with the sole aim of Getting Brexit Done. Hence the December election. In many ways GE2019 was NOT a General Election.
The last proper General Election in the UK was June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament. That's your benchmark.
Bet accordingly.
p.s. I'm personally very glad that Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair.
I think I understand the point you are making - whilst the 2019 election is the status quo, its artificial. Ordinarily the Labour task would be considered politically unlikely - as we all said in the aftermath.
But if we consider the 2019 result to be the aberration, then a revision to the norm can be expected to happen as the start of any new electoral move. There are swathes of red wall seats which endless polls have shows will not just revert to Labour but will deliver them 5 figure majorities.
If we bake that 2017 reversion in, the task facing Starmer is much smaller, and much more attainable. Then we look at the two other political low tides from 2015 likely to come back in:
The absence of unionist MPs in Scotland feels like a situation that can't be sustained - so expect 20-30 seats to switch from the motorhome party. The absence of yellow MPs in rural England is already a tide rushing back in. The focus is always on Labour, but as is clear it is the LibDems who will mop up disaffected sane voters in places where "Sink the Boats" makes people feel sick.
So, we reset the Red Wall. We drain out the SNP flood. We remove the dam from the LibDems. And suddenly a thumping Tory defeat is not just possible, it feels likely. To stay in power they need to preserve all three of these artificial positions. Which politically means they need to be Janus, a task they are spectacularly failing to pull off.
Yes, I think the Tories have snookered themselves. It is hard to see any of those 3 fronts being contained next GE. While Scotland is unique, the other 2 fronts play out across most E and W constituencies. They are sociological rather than geographical waves.
Tory unpopularity with the working age population is astonishing. I doubt there’s been anything like it in the history of two-party politics in this country.
Yes, it is deeply concerning.
The only people they seem to look after (and protect from policy) is the retired and they've dug a hole so deep there I struggle to see how they get out now.
Opposition will do a lot of the work.
Labour, in government, will be unlikely to resist the temptation to try to buy pensioner votes. I think some of the bias of the old to the Tories is in fact a bias of the old to the incumbent government.
Things could change quite rapidly, at least in terms of rhetoric and polling. But would a new Tory government, after a Starmer interregnum, be able to resist the temptation to buy pensioner votes? I have my doubts. (Well, okay, not many doubts, I'm fairly confident that governments of both sides will follow the path of least resistance and genuflect to the pensioner vote.)
OTOH, many pensioners will still vote Tory regardless, so why should SKS bother going all out Tory? Or (as remarked to me yesterday) so cowardly in his approach to Brexit etc. that he might as well be Tory. And ditto with baby starving, Scottish referendum, and so on and so forth.
The Tories have gone so far (as already remarked in the thread) it's probably impossible to rebalance things and make a fairer balance with the people actually doing the work without upsetting the pensioner vote irreparably (for instance, by imposing NI on all, or merging it with income tax, or cutting IHT allowances or converting them to CGT).
My argument is mainly grounded on what happened under the previous Labour government, rather than on hypotheticals about the future.
Under the Labour government of 1997-2010* we saw several moves that increased spending on pensioners. We had the first pension lock, to ensure there wasn't a repeat of low inflation leading to a tiny increase in the state pension. We had various freebies given to pensioners - TV licenses, bus passes, fuel allowances.
The consequence of this was seen in election results. In the 2010 GE the bias of the old to vote Tories was at its lowest since 1992.
Expect to see the same again. I'd be gobsmacked if pensioners were not reassured by Labour budgets, and I'd expect votes to change as they did before.
The attraction of buying the votes of pensioners is that it is really simple. The government only has to keep the money flowing. Sorting out the problems for younger voters, such as the housing crisis, might sound simple - just build more houses! - but runs into all sorts of other issues - Who will build them? Will there be enough building materials at a low enough price? Where? - which make them practically more difficult, and even in a best case scenario will take years to deliver tangible results.
* Actually, probably more correctly in the period 2001-2010. I'd have to dig out the details of when the various reforms were made. But the very small pension increase happened in the first Parliament, 1997-2001, and Labour consequently fell further behind with the pensioner vote at the 2001 GE. They learnt their lesson then and I don't think they will be looking for a refresher.
Our pensioners are still mostly boomers, I suppose, but Gen X will soon take them over in that category - can we say the priorities of pensioners will stay the same when that happens? Are Gen Xers who are going into retirement / retirement age better or worse off than their parents? Do they think their kids are as well of as they were at their age? I imagine on social issues the next generation of pensioners will be more liberal on average than the last, even if not as liberal as the young. Will that significantly change that group's typical allegiance to the Tories?
I have Generation X down as starting to be born in 1965, so they won't start to hit state pension age for a few more election cycles.
I think it's natural for pensioners to be a little more small-c conservative, because they will generally be reliant on others to provide for them. Their capacity to adapt to changing circumstances - by finding a new job, changing careers, moving, etc - is obviously impaired to one degree or another. This has to make your more wary of change in a general sense. And though these factors relate less to social issues, there is a degree to which people's social attitudes and opinions are formed in adolescence and early adulthood, and change thereafter is less likely and slower.
So I think there are very good reasons not to expect a change in the attitudes of the pensioner group, particularly in the economic fundamentals.
But I think it is worth emphasising that, if my analysis is correct, their political allegiance is to some degree to the incumbent government, rather than the Tories, and so we might expect to see the very sharp divide in voting intention by age soften, perhaps considerably, if Labour form the next government.
The Conservatives and Labour will always be the two main parties... until they are not.
Time was when: ...every boy and every gal That’s born into the world alive Is either a little Liberal Or else a little Conservative!
Neither party has a divine right to compete for power; it's not inconceivable that the LDs replace the Tories permanently (until the next change).
The oddness of the current polling is that we keep getting mad predictions of Labour winning everything everywhere. Supposedly that Channel 4 Poll last night had Labour taking Richmond off Sunak.
The electorate have shown they are well up for tactical voting. There is no mass desire for Sunak in the way there was for Blair. But there is a mass demand to get shut of this government. And people showing that they are motivated and well informed about how to vote to bring that about.
If there truly was a Tory collapse, surely there would be scores more LibDems elected rather than Labour winning Richmond. Some Greens too. But in what gets simplified as a two party choice the pollsters interpret national polls nationally instead of looking at reality.
Compare and contrast the LD vote in a seat we're the ABC choice in vs a seat where its Labour. In one seat we pick up a 5 figure majority, In the other seat we lose our deposit. That is what we can expect in the GE - Labour and LD candidates winning outrageous seats whilst their colleagues elsewhere lose their deposit.
Forget UNS.
All sounds entirely sensible, until you remember how poorly the LDs have performed at national elections since 2010.
Which is where Dave'n'George were smarter than the current team.
If Lib and Lab take potshots at each other (2015 due to coalition fallout, 2019 due to the awfulness of Jez 2.0), Conservatives can do well without too much difficulty.
By being so awful, the 2019-now government has made it clear to the red and yellow teams where they should be aiming their fire. And that's good for the Lib Dems in the 50(?) seats they can put on a decent show in, and good for Labour everywhere else in England.
Damned with faint praise there, much?
Electorally the current Tory team are simply not up to it. Activists locally getting restless. Suspect another bad set of locals would be Rishi's last.
Blimey, that would make six Tory PMs since 2016... Hardly screams strong and stable. You want to give the people who chose Truss another pop at selecting the leader of a UN P5 and G7 economy? Remind me of the definition of insanity, again.
So its better to have the person who lost to Truss?
It's not about strong and stable; it's about scraping the barnacles off the boat preparing the party for an election.
For the 2019 voting Tory brand AND most of the recent activist base, the biggest barnacles are in No 10 and No 11.
But what are you suggesting instead ?
Nobody is going to believe promises of unfunded tax cuts.
And few Conservatives seem to want to boast about full employment and NHS employment increasing by 300k since 2019.
Tackling public sector pension entitlement, and reducing the size of the civil service.
Freeing the country from the interfering 'man from the govt, here to help'.
Which leads to the response of "you've had 13 years to do that".
Now they're traditional conservative/libertarian ideas but how much money would they save and how much bureaucracy would they reduce.
Not a lot of either and nor would they get you many votes.
Because there are many millions of people who don't want less help from the government but instead think the government should be helping them more.
And that includes large parts of the Conservatives oldie voting base.
It saves money, cuts the deficit, and powers growth at the same time.
People need to stand on their own feet. Trying socialism lite usually leads to people wanting full fat socialism, until it then runs out of money and people remember that nothing is free....
Telling people they need to 'stand on their own two feet' isn't easy since the banks were bailed out.
Nor is it helped by sleaze in the executive oligarchy.
Standing on your own two feet doesn't include preferential treatment for being a political donor or mysterious payments and non-jobs to politicians who leave office from dubious foreign organisations.
Agreed. A Conservative Party with integrity might actually have some interesting solutions to offer. The current lot are just a front for kleptocracy.
To get caught once in the "one rule for us and another rule for you, do as I say not as I do" hypocrisy might be careless but to do it twice, as the Conservatives have done with money and with covid restrictions, suggests that there is something fundamentally rotten within the party.
Hard to find anything to argue with in OGH's summary. At least for yours truly!
Morning all.
@MikeSmithson keeps taking GE2019 as the benchmark. Whilst this looks right on paper, it's an illusion and for punters it's an error. GE2019 was a one-off 'Get Brexit Done' election to unblock the jam created during the Remainer Parliament. Boris Johnson galvanised the voters against the unelectable trotskyite anti-semitic Jeremy Corbyn with the sole aim of Getting Brexit Done. Hence the December election. In many ways GE2019 was NOT a General Election.
The last proper General Election in the UK was June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament. That's your benchmark.
Bet accordingly.
p.s. I'm personally very glad that Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair.
I think I understand the point you are making - whilst the 2019 election is the status quo, its artificial. Ordinarily the Labour task would be considered politically unlikely - as we all said in the aftermath.
But if we consider the 2019 result to be the aberration, then a revision to the norm can be expected to happen as the start of any new electoral move. There are swathes of red wall seats which endless polls have shows will not just revert to Labour but will deliver them 5 figure majorities.
If we bake that 2017 reversion in, the task facing Starmer is much smaller, and much more attainable. Then we look at the two other political low tides from 2015 likely to come back in:
The absence of unionist MPs in Scotland feels like a situation that can't be sustained - so expect 20-30 seats to switch from the motorhome party. The absence of yellow MPs in rural England is already a tide rushing back in. The focus is always on Labour, but as is clear it is the LibDems who will mop up disaffected sane voters in places where "Sink the Boats" makes people feel sick.
So, we reset the Red Wall. We drain out the SNP flood. We remove the dam from the LibDems. And suddenly a thumping Tory defeat is not just possible, it feels likely. To stay in power they need to preserve all three of these artificial positions. Which politically means they need to be Janus, a task they are spectacularly failing to pull off.
Yes, I think the Tories have snookered themselves. It is hard to see any of those 3 fronts being contained next GE. While Scotland is unique, the other 2 fronts play out across most E and W constituencies. They are sociological rather than geographical waves.
Tory unpopularity with the working age population is astonishing. I doubt there’s been anything like it in the history of two-party politics in this country.
What possible reason is there at the minute for someone who works for a living to support the Tories?
Sunak has made his bed and shown that working people only exist in his eyes to be taxed ever higher to provide welfare for those who don't work. That's something you can understand from Labour, but from the Tories?
The jack boots will be on next and barbed wire being put up to intern unemployed and pensioners. Give it a rest Adolf.
Hang on. Barty is an absolutist which often translates into absurdist straw man positions - the rant about 30mph zones a perfect example. But he has a point - the status quo is broken. We *are* paying vast amounts in taxes. Where he descends into the absurdist is the suggestion that the money is going into welfare. When our welfare system grudgingly gives people living poverty assuming it pays anything at all.
We're paying record taxes, true. But its going to spivs, not on services, not on infrastructure, not on welfare. We pay lots and get little. Where does all that money go? Even if you are as high Tory and say "inefficiency" that is literally my point. Inefficiency means money is being wasted. Spent on consultants. Advisers. Middlemen. Spivs...
The problem we have is that whilst "we pay taxes and get little back" is good analysis, nobody wants to go after why that is. And propose a solution because the problem is too big and our politicians too timid.
Your jackboots analogy is one solution. Hungary have done it. France wants to do it. Spain and Germany are toying with it...
The bit in bold: it goes on debt repayments.
We have a shit-ton of debt. We need to reflate the economy to lessen the debt burden over time via inflation. But the anti-inflationary reflexes we built up in the neoliberal era prevent us from doing this. So we have problems.
That isn't true with public services. We spend ever larger amounts on schools and hospitals despite front line service provision being catastrophically starved of money.
A basic problem is that everything has been marketised. Instead of driving market-led efficiency we have endless overlapping targets and contracts and regulations. The market is a vast business by itself.
How much money did we waste creating Clinical Commissioning Groups in the NHS? Then replacing them with Integrated Care Boards? How integrated are the dozens of "integrated" boards and how many contracts do they negotiate and manage and how much is spent on administration?
Thats our problem. A fat layer of middlemen who suck the cash out of the system.
That and house prices.
The pointless middleman thing has been around for ages- it's there in the Golgafrincham B Ark, and Hitchhikers was first written in 1978. But it does seem to have got worse and more expensive as a phenomenon.
Though you rather forgotten the fact that the rest of the population of Golgafrincham died due to not having the people on the B Ark.
People complain about 'Middle Managers' or 'Commissioning' in the NHS, but then the NHS pays a hell of a lot less for most drugs that it needs to pay for than most other healthcare systems do, so it seems those Commissioning Managers might actually be doing a bloody good and useful job?
Hard to find anything to argue with in OGH's summary. At least for yours truly!
Morning all.
@MikeSmithson keeps taking GE2019 as the benchmark. Whilst this looks right on paper, it's an illusion and for punters it's an error. GE2019 was a one-off 'Get Brexit Done' election to unblock the jam created during the Remainer Parliament. Boris Johnson galvanised the voters against the unelectable trotskyite anti-semitic Jeremy Corbyn with the sole aim of Getting Brexit Done. Hence the December election. In many ways GE2019 was NOT a General Election.
The last proper General Election in the UK was June 2017, which resulted in a hung parliament. That's your benchmark.
Bet accordingly.
p.s. I'm personally very glad that Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair.
I think I understand the point you are making - whilst the 2019 election is the status quo, its artificial. Ordinarily the Labour task would be considered politically unlikely - as we all said in the aftermath.
But if we consider the 2019 result to be the aberration, then a revision to the norm can be expected to happen as the start of any new electoral move. There are swathes of red wall seats which endless polls have shows will not just revert to Labour but will deliver them 5 figure majorities.
If we bake that 2017 reversion in, the task facing Starmer is much smaller, and much more attainable. Then we look at the two other political low tides from 2015 likely to come back in:
The absence of unionist MPs in Scotland feels like a situation that can't be sustained - so expect 20-30 seats to switch from the motorhome party. The absence of yellow MPs in rural England is already a tide rushing back in. The focus is always on Labour, but as is clear it is the LibDems who will mop up disaffected sane voters in places where "Sink the Boats" makes people feel sick.
So, we reset the Red Wall. We drain out the SNP flood. We remove the dam from the LibDems. And suddenly a thumping Tory defeat is not just possible, it feels likely. To stay in power they need to preserve all three of these artificial positions. Which politically means they need to be Janus, a task they are spectacularly failing to pull off.
Yes, I think the Tories have snookered themselves. It is hard to see any of those 3 fronts being contained next GE. While Scotland is unique, the other 2 fronts play out across most E and W constituencies. They are sociological rather than geographical waves.
Tory unpopularity with the working age population is astonishing. I doubt there’s been anything like it in the history of two-party politics in this country.
What possible reason is there at the minute for someone who works for a living to support the Tories?
Sunak has made his bed and shown that working people only exist in his eyes to be taxed ever higher to provide welfare for those who don't work. That's something you can understand from Labour, but from the Tories?
The jack boots will be on next and barbed wire being put up to intern unemployed and pensioners. Give it a rest Adolf.
Hang on. Barty is an absolutist which often translates into absurdist straw man positions - the rant about 30mph zones a perfect example. But he has a point - the status quo is broken. We *are* paying vast amounts in taxes. Where he descends into the absurdist is the suggestion that the money is going into welfare. When our welfare system grudgingly gives people living poverty assuming it pays anything at all.
We're paying record taxes, true. But its going to spivs, not on services, not on infrastructure, not on welfare. We pay lots and get little. Where does all that money go? Even if you are as high Tory and say "inefficiency" that is literally my point. Inefficiency means money is being wasted. Spent on consultants. Advisers. Middlemen. Spivs...
The problem we have is that whilst "we pay taxes and get little back" is good analysis, nobody wants to go after why that is. And propose a solution because the problem is too big and our politicians too timid.
Your jackboots analogy is one solution. Hungary have done it. France wants to do it. Spain and Germany are toying with it...
Interestingly the idea that all our taxes are going on "spivs" is a bit like Tory extremists who think all our taxes are going on "diversity officers" etc
I never said all our money is going on welfare. What I said, is that we now spend more on welfare than we spend on all public sector employees put together.
That's right, we spend more on welfare than we spend on every doctor, nurse, police officer, prison officer, teacher and more combined. Including any spivs the state hires.
And those on welfare are getting a double-digit pay rise, while those who work for a living for the state are not.
That is where our money is going. Well some of it.
Between welfare, people working for the state and debt interest out of every £5 the state spends of our taxes approximately £2 goes on welfare, £2 goes on people working for a living (slightly less than the welfare amount, but we're rounding here), and £1 goes on debt interest.
So only 40% of that expenditure is 'productive', even if you generously assume all public sector employees are productive.
You can eliminate every spiv, or every diversity officer, or whatever other prejudice you have. But when between those three issues we spend 60% of our taxes on welfare and debt interest then we have a problem.
Especially when the government is increasing annually the amount we spend on welfare and debt interest, and reducing annually the amount we spend on wages.
PS who said anything about "people living in poverty". Very little of our welfare system goes to people living in poverty. Welfare != support for poverty, that is the problem.
Oh Dear , you don't even realise that benefits & pensions are spent in the economy as opposed to the billions the spivs take and send to tax havens etc. Explain why the £2 on workers is productive and yet the £2 on pensions/benefits is not, give us another laugh. You really don't have a clue.
Actually giving wealthy people living offshore double digit increases to their pensions doesn't get spent in the economy, whereas giving people who are working for a living in this country a pay rise does.
The problem is that people assume that 'welfare' goes to those who need it, so is a good thing. If it did, there'd be a lot less poverty in this country, considering that is where our money is going yet those who are in poverty get sod all - then the question to ask is where is the rest of the welfare budget going?
If you don't understand why people working for a living might be more productive than those who aren't, then I'm not sure I can help you understand it better. Others smarter than you do though.
Comments
Freeing the country from the interfering 'man from the govt, here to help'.
In my area (blue wall), far more fiscally dry than the government, and socially liberal (the socially illiberal are generally not 'joiners' in my experience). Dislike the big state.
But if that changed, why would May 24 be too late? Lets assume the Tories have a catastrophic election night with losses up and down the land showing that the ABC apocalypse is coming and coming hard.
Mrs Brady polishes his little pearl revolver and goes to Number 10 again again. We get an announcement about the rules for the leadership contest, and then swathes of the party declare fealty to Lee Anderson.
By the end of May Anderson is MP and has the summer and the autumn to transform the political narrative. Instead of 30p, the Tories will bribe the electorate with 50p. A maelstrom of campaigning where they try and prove that Starmer will steal your extra 20p. "I always said he was a Kid Starver" said ex Labour member and now Tory PPC for Don Valley BJO.
"Fifty Pee or Fuck Off" is the Tory conference slogan that gets the pundits aghast and the voters enthralled. The Mail publishes a letter proving that there is a woke leftie trans lawyer taking orders directly from Kid Starver who is planning to give your extra 20p to child rapists now being released into an open trans prison to be built IN YOUR TOWN!
Etc etc
Is there a definitive book on the Normandy landings/campaign?
1. the existing Parliament is still "vital, viable, and capable of doing its job",
2. a general election would be "detrimental to the national economy", and
3. the sovereign could "rely on finding another prime minister who could govern for a reasonable period with a working majority in the House of Commons".
1 and 2 LOL, to satisfy 3 you're going to have to have pre-coronated someone again.
To find this kind of swing unlikely we must all ignore the evidence of our eyes - we can see the polls showing Lab between 15 - 20% ahead. We can see the projections that put the Cons at wipe out levels of bad (less than 75 MPs total) to just very bad (around 150 MPs total). We can see that this government doesn't actually have any policies it wishes to implement to improve people's lives, and we can see that the policies it has done have done sweet fanny adams.
It is to disregard reality to think that Starmer would somehow go into a GE with the polling numbers he has and not be favourite to win and win big - and any situation where he doesn't should not be seen as "this was a hard hill to climb" but as a monumental failure. I don't give Starmer any credit for being in this position - Johnson and Truss did this, and Sunak doesn't have the skill to right the ship for the Tories.
Now they're traditional conservative/libertarian ideas but how much money would they save and how much bureaucracy would they reduce.
Not a lot of either and nor would they get you many votes.
Because there are many millions of people who don't want less help from the government but instead think the government should be helping them more.
And that includes large parts of the Conservatives oldie voting base.
2 is no longer part of the Convention AFAIK.
3 no need for a pre-coronation, the convention is that governments can undergo leadership campaigns while in office.
If the PM were ousted and a majority of the Commons were willing to have the Deputy PM (currently Oliver Dowden) or someone else as interim PM until the end of the leadership campaign, then Lascelles condition 3 would be met too.
The challenge, as far as I can see it, is that whilst people don’t like a big state, they often like the effects of a big state (or rather, dislike the effects of reducing the big state). The recent announcement about barn conversions and its impact on national parks springs to mind: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/aug/07/proposals-to-ease-planning-laws-in-englands-national-parks-condemned?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other. As soon as you advocate for the details of a smaller state you are open to attack as to the impact of removing state bureaucracy. Not sure how you answer that.
People need to stand on their own feet. Trying socialism lite usually leads to people wanting full fat socialism, until it then runs out of money and people remember that nothing is free....
Which is the point. They are a malign symptom of the enormous Brexit distraction.
The problem is 'vested interest groups' are far given far too much voice because the left wing establishment like perpetuating the bureaucracy and hate the Toooooories.
The biggest failure of our 13 years is not changing this by gutting state funding of quangos and replacing leadership with those who are more like minded.
Their lame duck period is the entirety of the post-Covid period. They have excited the pandemic with no money and no clue what to do. We have had two changes of PM and the only impact has been to leave even less money available to do things with.
Though I have equally certainly influenced the way in which they think.
All of the problem you list are fixable over time.
When it was proposed to hire x,000 more police officers, some said it was actually impossible.
The current block is the hoarding of planning permission. Which is logical for various actors.
Imagine you are a big developer. You have the permission to build an estate of 5,000 homes. If you try and build 5,000 homes now
1) the local house prices will crash
2) the local council will find the strain on infrastructure intolerable
3) the NIMBYs will riot
4) finding the builders may be a problem
So, instead, you build 250 a year. That makes the council mellow. The NIMBYs will get bored with the inevitable. The house prices won’t crash. The building companies and suppliers you contract with will love a steady 20 years of work….
Sand and Steel is pretty good.
And The Longest Day is still, after many years (I remember reading it as a kid), a pretty good narrative history.
Agreed and I think Sunak quite likes being PM.
October 24 gives him 2 years in the role then he can pursue other interests without the toxicity of Johnson and Truss, who are responsible for the trashing of the conservative brand
I am getting to an age where I already find the view of some Alphas, Millenials and Zoomers quaint. They have forgotten things that used to be radical, so it is radical again.
You remember those pictorial stories that used to go round on a drum? Such is history
Morning all.
PS A new candidate for Boris's career template:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tb59dEHRt5Q
Almost all of them were part of the Government under Cameron pre-referendum and not backbenchers. Only Rees Mogg and Kwarteng from memory are the exceptions - and Kwarteng was considered a "rising star" pre-referendum.
If you think Brexit was a distraction, then surely you'd want to put it behind us by moving on from arguments over Europe? Doing a hokey-cokey rejoin campaign would be just as much if not more of a distraction than Brexit was.
I completely agree. October '24 looks a good bet.
I don't agree with Mike about the likelihood of him leaving it until January '25, for all sort of reasons including the terrible 'optics' it creates of clinging to the last vestiges of power.
No, October 2024 looks very likely to me.
I think most people genuinely value our national parks and will baulk at them being weakened. And I think that’s a microcosm of a larger argument; much (though by no means all) of the bureaucracy that exists serves a purpose. Remove the bureaucracy and you remove the protections against, inter alia, rapacious capitalism, which seems particularly morally defunct at present.
And hasn’t a ‘bonfire of the quangos’ already been tried?
I guess what I’m trying to say is that I agree in principle with the smaller state, I just think that the Tories’ attempts to reduce the state over the past 13 years have (a) largely failed and (b) felt more like stuffing the public in favour of private profit.
I wonder if there is a niche for a small state Labour Party? Sounds bonkers, I know, but it might be that the Labour Party could find ways to reduce the size of the state whilst protecting against private profiteering.
You can see from the tory grotbags on here that they still have some, limited, appeal beyond the type of old people who get cheated out of their life savings by Indian tech support scammers. In this threadbare electoral coalition there are cod libertarians, social conservatives, monotone trans-obsessives, continuity leavers, lachrymose nostalgics and simple minded xenophobes.
I don't see what mechanism there is for amendment of the principles short of a further letter from Senex. What are you referring to?
The problem is, R granting the request is the default. You are suggesting he be asked to depart from precedent and go out of his way to further the interests of one faction in one political party. Not going to happen.
And, in reference to an earlier comment of yours, the idea that under a previously-floated ID scheme council workers investigating fly-tipping would have had full access to people's NHS medical records is palpably absurd. They wouldn't.
We are a major net importer of gas.
If we were a net exporter of gas you might have a point, but we're not. We need to import gas, storage or no storage. We don't produce anywhere near enough gas - and the Opposition and the Scottish government it seems want us to produce even less of it.
We're paying record taxes, true. But its going to spivs, not on services, not on infrastructure, not on welfare. We pay lots and get little. Where does all that money go? Even if you are as high Tory and say "inefficiency" that is literally my point. Inefficiency means money is being wasted. Spent on consultants. Advisers. Middlemen. Spivs...
The problem we have is that whilst "we pay taxes and get little back" is good analysis, nobody wants to go after why that is. And propose a solution because the problem is too big and our politicians too timid.
Your jackboots analogy is one solution. Hungary have done it. France wants to do it. Spain and Germany are toying with it...
I accept a remain vote would have kept some saner and more qualified Tory MPs in cabinet but think most of the incompetents would still have come through.
Not sure how many hardcore gender activists there are, but the same applies to hardcore activists on other fronts. But there's a big chink of activists like me - actually very left wing in some ways, but also pragmatic. We need to win this one and govern cautiously, and we can argue about details in the second term.
As long as the UK lurches along in its broken state, independence will remain a direct goal for many - I know that. But politically it is in retreat due to the bungling corruption of the SNP.
Nor is it helped by sleaze in the executive oligarchy.
Standing on your own two feet doesn't include preferential treatment for being a political donor or mysterious payments and non-jobs to politicians who leave office from dubious foreign organisations.
A look at Cameron's actual cabinet shows that to be fanciful.
Osborne; May; Hammond; Gove; Fallon; Crabb; Hunt; Grayling; Greening; McLoughlin; Javid; Villiers; Truss; Clark; Letwin; Mundell; Rudd.
And who said anything about what happens next ?
For now, government continues to be distracted by the ongoing and unpopular project.
We have a shit-ton of debt. We need to reflate the economy to lessen the debt burden over time via inflation. But the anti-inflationary reflexes we built up in the neoliberal era prevent us from doing this. So we have problems.
The basic agreement as I understand it was that the war was a Bad Thing and talks at every available level should continue. Ukraine's allies want Russian withdrawal before talks, China wants a ceasefire before talks.
The Cabinet Office maintains the principles and the second was dropped from its guidance thirty years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lascelles_Principles
Historian Peter Hennessy stated in 1994 that the second of the three conditions had since been "dropped from the canon", being no longer included in internal Cabinet Office guidance.[4]
R doesn't have to further any interests of any faction, he has to follow the guidance as it exists from the Cabinet Office, in order to stay out of political decisions.
Right now, the poll average is basically L45C25. If it's still that in thirteen months time, what do the government lose by holding on for a few more months in case Something Turns Up?
And if the polls do close up a bit, say to L38C32, the temptation to let that run a bit further will be strong. It probably won't work, and probably will annoy the voters, but it would be tempting.
I don't think it is in the strategic interests of the Conservatives to go long, but I can see how they can rationalise it tactically. And right now, they are grabbing at short term tactics, which is partly why they and we are in this mess
The SNP are deluded fcukwits so what.
A basic problem is that everything has been marketised. Instead of driving market-led efficiency we have endless overlapping targets and contracts and regulations. The market is a vast business by itself.
How much money did we waste creating Clinical Commissioning Groups in the NHS? Then replacing them with Integrated Care Boards? How integrated are the dozens of "integrated" boards and how many contracts do they negotiate and manage and how much is spent on administration?
Thats our problem. A fat layer of middlemen who suck the cash out of the system.
An utterly ginormous sum and why future governments will not have any money to spend on their projects
Hugely depressing
There is no "ongoing and unpopular project".
On the substantive point, hundreds of thousands of people quit crap jobs during the pandemic, and despite a record population many of the crap employers are now short of staff.
It rather suggests to me that the Tory Party has given up, if they can't be bothered appealing to the vast majority of voters who have common decency.
And 'project' is probably being generous to the mess.
Unpopular it certainly is.
Thankfully I had my passport on me, to which they smiled and let me on my way with a thumb up.
They like the British out here!
I was listening to an interesting podcast at the weekend discussing the nature and history of rent and rent seeking (I'm a fun guy, I know) and the argument went as follows: it is argued that rent is set by the market, and the market is based on consumers and suppliers, but what happens if suppliers (in this specific podcast they discussed land, oil and housing) band together and say they'll take their ball and stop playing unless rents go up beyond what the market is actually demanding? Well, nothing - people need housing so rent can always go up even if the housing exists because only a specific class of people can own the properties; oil production can increase but because OPEC can act as a cartel they can demand that oil prices increase despite more supply than demand at certain times.
So, taking this point into mind, any taxes should primarily be aimed at rebalancing that power (whether you're on the left like me or a right wing Georgian). Landlords should not be able to constantly expect profit on their investment - some investments fail, that is the so called will of the market. Giant corporations should not be "too big to fail" nor should they be "too big to fine". Economies grow when poor people can spend money, because they do, not when rich people can sit on hoards of gold like dragons doing nothing productive.
i) Frictional, beaurocratic & administrative cost increases due to putting up trade barriers between ourselves and our nearest neighbours.
ii) A culture of gold plating & empire building prevalent in the civil service - driven (certainly in part) by unintended consequences of pseudo-marketisation & i)
iii) Increasing debt costs.
Altogether it means we're collectively paying more than ever for less.
https://www.propublica.org/article/covid-maternity-stillbirth-vaccines-pregnancy
We should all be concerned about that sort of rhetoric coming from the governing party. The convention and its interpretation may be imperfect in places, but one does not throw the baby out with the bath water on these things.
This feels of a level of constitutional significance that it should need cross party support to change.
Every economic transaction has two sides.
I might be an English incomer, but I am sympathetic to the nationalist cause. Scotland *could* thrive as an independent nation. But Brexit has shown how half-based and misguided promises do more damage than good. The reason for independence can't just be because Scotland. The answer to pensions and currency and economy can't be England will pay.
Put meat on the bones - why the UK is broken and how an independent Scotland would manage the immediate challenges and then progress towards a positive vision for a different future and it can come back.
The pointless middleman thing has been around for ages- it's there in the Golgafrincham B Ark, and Hitchhikers was first written in 1978. But it does seem to have got worse and more expensive as a phenomenon.
I never said all our money is going on welfare. What I said, is that we now spend more on welfare than we spend on all public sector employees put together.
That's right, we spend more on welfare than we spend on every doctor, nurse, police officer, prison officer, teacher and more combined. Including any spivs the state hires.
And those on welfare are getting a double-digit pay rise, while those who work for a living for the state are not.
That is where our money is going. Well some of it.
Between welfare, people working for the state and debt interest out of every £5 the state spends of our taxes approximately £2 goes on welfare, £2 goes on people working for a living (slightly less than the welfare amount, but we're rounding here), and £1 goes on debt interest.
So only 40% of that expenditure is 'productive', even if you generously assume all public sector employees are productive.
You can eliminate every spiv, or every diversity officer, or whatever other prejudice you have. But when between those three issues we spend 60% of our taxes on welfare and debt interest then we have a problem.
Especially when the government is increasing annually the amount we spend on welfare and debt interest, and reducing annually the amount we spend on wages.
PS who said anything about "people living in poverty". Very little of our welfare system goes to people living in poverty. Welfare != support for poverty, that is the problem.
And it doesn't matter. HM has to be positively satisfied on all points to even consider refusing a dissolution. All it takes is one Sunakite MP to suggest by back channels - say, a note thrust into the Equerry's stocking-top - that he and 30 of his mates will be voting with the oppo from here on it in protest against the ousting - and that creates too much doubt for him to refuse.
Where comes this belief that once in government this mantle of centrism will be shed and a centre-left or even left wing government will emerge? Where is the evidence that SKS and his team even have that as a desire? It just seems like cope - a reason other than "just not the Tories" to vote for Labour.
A huge explosion was reported in Zagorskiy Optical and Mechanical plant near Moscow
The factory had contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defense. It is part of Shvabe Holding, which is producing sights, thermal imagers, laser rangefinders, and other similar products.
https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1689192323588947968
HM has to follow his guidance. If the guidance is that the PM no longer commands a majority of the Commons, but someone else does, then that someone else will be invited to Downing Street to form a new government.
30 backbenchers can say what they like, unless they resign the whip they are counted in the government party and that there is a majority of the Commons to back the new PM.
I think it's natural for pensioners to be a little more small-c conservative, because they will generally be reliant on others to provide for them. Their capacity to adapt to changing circumstances - by finding a new job, changing careers, moving, etc - is obviously impaired to one degree or another. This has to make your more wary of change in a general sense. And though these factors relate less to social issues, there is a degree to which people's social attitudes and opinions are formed in adolescence and early adulthood, and change thereafter is less likely and slower.
So I think there are very good reasons not to expect a change in the attitudes of the pensioner group, particularly in the economic fundamentals.
But I think it is worth emphasising that, if my analysis is correct, their political allegiance is to some degree to the incumbent government, rather than the Tories, and so we might expect to see the very sharp divide in voting intention by age soften, perhaps considerably, if Labour form the next government.
People complain about 'Middle Managers' or 'Commissioning' in the NHS, but then the NHS pays a hell of a lot less for most drugs that it needs to pay for than most other healthcare systems do, so it seems those Commissioning Managers might actually be doing a bloody good and useful job?
The problem is that people assume that 'welfare' goes to those who need it, so is a good thing. If it did, there'd be a lot less poverty in this country, considering that is where our money is going yet those who are in poverty get sod all - then the question to ask is where is the rest of the welfare budget going?
If you don't understand why people working for a living might be more productive than those who aren't, then I'm not sure I can help you understand it better. Others smarter than you do though.