Good morning all - I think this is a neat summation of what I am thinking.
In 2019 I witnessed a phenomenon. Low voting Labour areas where suddenly there was a huge turnout. Records smashed according to staff at these polling stations. Then I watched these boxes tipped and tallied them - a Tory landslide.
Never mind a majority of 80, it could have been a majority of 100 had the ultra right not run a spoiler campaign in seats like Stockton North to let Labour cling on.
My hypothesis is that most of these non voters who turned Tory in 2019 won't vote. In key seats this will be a significant number of the DKs. If the Tory vote sinks heavily and the Labour vote rises a little, it will be a Labour gain.
Elsewhere we know a lot of Tories are both sick of and sickened by this government. As we saw in 1997, several million Tory voters are likely to sit on their hands. The commentary on polling posted above said that most DKs would break Tory "if forced". But they won't be forced. Starmer is not Jezbollah, there is no panic issue to force a reluctant Tory vote.
So we could probably go back to late 96 and look at the polls and the DKs and say the same about the Tory deficit then. Don't worry. Tory DKs will vote Tory. No, they won't.
I think that is a good analysis. Which is why I think Starmer has made a misstep on his latest immigration plan. It is one thing thinking the Tories are sh1t are handling the problem, it is another when many of these voters think that Labour's new plan will amount to the UK receiving far more migrants because the EU will d1ck us over when it comes to numbers, which will be their default view.
This is daft. Not even convinced it's effective politics: ...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the Mail
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him. Not clever at all.
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majority
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.
It's a European problem and can only be handled at the European level. The fact that the Tories have shat all over our relationship with the rest of Europe makes that harder than it needs to be, but Starmer should be applauded for trying.
What if a newly hard right EU decides on something like Rwanda? Do we eagerly join in with them just because it’s an EU policy, even though we decided that was too evil and immoral for the UK alone?
The Rwanda deal is for 1000 over 5 years. We had that many in 5 days last week.
It might just work as a deterrent. We don’t know until we actually TRY
If the whole EU can find some remote but safe island to send all these people to (much more likely given the size of the EU) what would you say? Would it suddenly become “acceptable”?
It is a fantasy to think that there is any country that wants to take these arrivals from us or the EU. Many of their own countries refuse them.
There are nine uninhabited islands in the Azores. Which belongs to Portugal and hence the EU. Could start there…
Ukrainian forces have recaptured the village of Andriivka in the eastern Donetsk region, marking one of the most significant battlefield gains in the area since nearby Bakhmut fell under Moscow’s control in May. https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1702589462226628701
...Ukraine's 3rd Separate Assault Brigade claimed that it had "eliminated" the intelligence chief of Russia's 72nd brigade, three battalion commanders "and almost all the infantry of the 72nd brigade, together with officers and a significant amount of equipment."..
This is daft. Not even convinced it's effective politics: ...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the Mail
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him. Not clever at all.
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majority
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.
It's a European problem and can only be handled at the European level. The fact that the Tories have shat all over our relationship with the rest of Europe makes that harder than it needs to be, but Starmer should be applauded for trying.
What if a newly hard right EU decides on something like Rwanda? Do we eagerly join in with them just because it’s an EU policy, even though we decided that was too evil and immoral for the UK alone?
The Rwanda deal is for 1000 over 5 years. We had that many in 5 days last week.
It might just work as a deterrent. We don’t know until we actually TRY
If the whole EU can find some remote but safe island to send all these people to (much more likely given the size of the EU) what would you say? Would it suddenly become “acceptable”?
It is a fantasy to think that there is any country that wants to take these arrivals from us or the EU. Many of their own countries refuse them.
There are nine uninhabited islands in the Azores. Which belongs to Portugal and hence the EU. Could start there…
Are there? According to my checks there are nine islands and they're all populated.
The polls can be flattering Labour and Labour could still win a landslide. The Labour poll leads are so large that these are not mutually exclusive.
Electoral Calculus gives a Labour majority of 92 with vote shares of 42-30.
That's not a prediction, by the way, but it does illustrate the scale of the hole that the Tories are in. Losing by only 12pp wouldn't be a terrible result for the Tories compared to polls regularly putting them 22 points behind, but they'd still lose 170 seats.
This is daft. Not even convinced it's effective politics: ...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the Mail
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him. Not clever at all.
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majority
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.
It's a European problem and can only be handled at the European level. The fact that the Tories have shat all over our relationship with the rest of Europe makes that harder than it needs to be, but Starmer should be applauded for trying.
What if a newly hard right EU decides on something like Rwanda? Do we eagerly join in with them just because it’s an EU policy, even though we decided that was too evil and immoral for the UK alone?
The Rwanda deal is for 1000 over 5 years. We had that many in 5 days last week.
It might just work as a deterrent. We don’t know until we actually TRY
If the whole EU can find some remote but safe island to send all these people to (much more likely given the size of the EU) what would you say? Would it suddenly become “acceptable”?
But we can't even try. Work the plan backwards - we need to catch them, detain them, legally process them, issue an expulsion order, find an airline. Only then do they get to go to Rwanda.
But we can't intern them. We can't process their claims. So we can't declare them illegal and deport them. Can't you see that?
No we don't. Their claims can be processed in Rwanda if the plan is implemented, that's how Australia did it. Anyone detained is immediately extradited, no questions asked, at which point nobody crosses by that method since nobody wants that fate.
Australia processed claims for asylum in Australia. We are proposing no such thing - claims processed in Rwanda would be for Rwanda.
In any case, let's say we switched your bypass scheme on today - deport them all direct to Rwanda. What do we do with all the ones we already have? Abandon their claims and deport them? To where - Rwanda can't take the numbers we would be sending.
This is the problem with the Rwanda thing - it is a dream sketched with crayons. Australia came up with a workable version of this because they are actually competent. We are not.
This is daft. Not even convinced it's effective politics: ...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the Mail
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him. Not clever at all.
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majority
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.
It's a European problem and can only be handled at the European level. The fact that the Tories have shat all over our relationship with the rest of Europe makes that harder than it needs to be, but Starmer should be applauded for trying.
What if a newly hard right EU decides on something like Rwanda? Do we eagerly join in with them just because it’s an EU policy, even though we decided that was too evil and immoral for the UK alone?
The Rwanda deal is for 1000 over 5 years. We had that many in 5 days last week.
It might just work as a deterrent. We don’t know until we actually TRY
If the whole EU can find some remote but safe island to send all these people to (much more likely given the size of the EU) what would you say? Would it suddenly become “acceptable”?
But we can't even try. Work the plan backwards - we need to catch them, detain them, legally process them, issue an expulsion order, find an airline. Only then do they get to go to Rwanda.
But we can't intern them. We can't process their claims. So we can't declare them illegal and deport them. Can't you see that?
Germany seems quite keen, nonetheless
“Germany 'wants EU to adopt 'Rwanda-style' migrant system with asylum seekers deported - similar to Britain's proposed scheme'”
Sure! It's a great headline! But in practice there are no solutions for the problems I listed. I would have more time for "send them to Rwanda" if there was a workable detailed plan. But there isn't - just "send them to Rwanda". A non-plan slogan.
This is a really weird narrative. Don't knows regress a bit to their old parties sure, but they also are waiting for answers to the following:
Are my household finances improving? Is the general economy improving? Are the government meeting their/my main objectives?
As well as who has the better campaign and vision for the future.
On the first three the govt will need enormous luck to get anywhere significantly helpful. It is quite possible they run a better campaign, and reduce the lead by 5% or so in the final month or two, but even that is far from given.
An argument for a May 24 GE is that next summers migrant arrival figures are very unlikely to be Sunaks advantage.
If the debate is around stopping illegal immigration then, even if the Tories are failing on that issue, it's much better political ground for them to debate on than falling living standards, NHS waiting lists, etc.
This is daft. Not even convinced it's effective politics: ...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the Mail
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him. Not clever at all.
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majority
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.
It's a European problem and can only be handled at the European level. The fact that the Tories have shat all over our relationship with the rest of Europe makes that harder than it needs to be, but Starmer should be applauded for trying.
What if a newly hard right EU decides on something like Rwanda? Do we eagerly join in with them just because it’s an EU policy, even though we decided that was too evil and immoral for the UK alone?
The Rwanda deal is for 1000 over 5 years. We had that many in 5 days last week.
It might just work as a deterrent. We don’t know until we actually TRY
If the whole EU can find some remote but safe island to send all these people to (much more likely given the size of the EU) what would you say? Would it suddenly become “acceptable”?
But we can't even try. Work the plan backwards - we need to catch them, detain them, legally process them, issue an expulsion order, find an airline. Only then do they get to go to Rwanda.
But we can't intern them. We can't process their claims. So we can't declare them illegal and deport them. Can't you see that?
Germany seems quite keen, nonetheless
“Germany 'wants EU to adopt 'Rwanda-style' migrant system with asylum seekers deported - similar to Britain's proposed scheme'”
'Focusing on the other end of the digestive system, this year’s Ig Nobel prize for public health was awarded to researchers for the development of a smart toilet that uses various technologies to monitor human waste for signs of disease and an anal-print sensor as part of its system to identify the user.
The award for medicine went to researchers who used cadavers to explore whether each of an individual’s nostrils contains an equal number of hairs, while the communication prize was scooped by scientists who have conducted investigations, including neuroimaging analyses, into people who are expert at speaking backwards.
Elsewhere, the literature prize went to researchers exploring the peculiar feeling that can arise when the same word is repeatedly written – a phenomenon they say is an example of “jamais vu”, whereby people find the familiar to be unfamiliar – while the prize for physics went to researchers who discovered that the sexual activity of anchovies, which gather at night off the Galician coast to spawn, can create small whirls that mix different layers of water in the oceans.'
Some interesting stuff - and deeper than the uninformed viewer might think: for instance, those anchovies could be bringing up nutrient-rich deep water to the photosynthetic zone at the surface. Which has interesting implications as they'd be laying their planktonic eggs into that same water, I should think.
This is daft. Not even convinced it's effective politics: ...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the Mail
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him. Not clever at all.
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majority
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
In the last 7 days about 1400 small boat arrivals have been recorded. Three Bibby Stockholms needed for these alone.
Meanwhile both the Tories prison hulk and Rwanda plans have completely failed.
Banging on about their own failures isn't likely to help Sunak.
Ah more little Englanderism from people who cant look beyond these shores.
Try looking at the total mess the EU is in re migration and then explain to me why we would want to jump in to it.
Well it would annoy you for starters, so there's that.
Always good fun, but hardly the basis of a national policy
As usual, there is one policy that has been identified that would work. Cut off the demand for super cheap, undocumented labour.
The asylum seekers that I know via my church do not work, not least because it breaks the terms of their application.
Actually processing applications in reasonable time may help reduce the number undocumented.
The people arriving in the small boats are largely not 100% asylum seekers - they want to work.
They do not want to register as asylum seekers, precisely because they want to work.
A big flaw in the discussions of immigrants and asylum seeking is that a mix of motives for immigration is typical. Consider
1) An Indian friend. A Christian. His church gets burned down whenever the RSS have a bad week, or need a day off from attacking Muslims. This doesn't happen every year. But he came to the UK to work. At least a part of his reason was being able to go to church without a fire extinguisher. 2) My wife. She came here from Peru, to join family, find education & work and to escape the Joy Joy Maoist terrorist situation there. What percentage of each? - *she* is hard pressed to say.
This is daft. Not even convinced it's effective politics: ...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the Mail
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him. Not clever at all.
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majority
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
In the last 7 days about 1400 small boat arrivals have been recorded. Three Bibby Stockholms needed for these alone.
Meanwhile both the Tories prison hulk and Rwanda plans have completely failed.
Banging on about their own failures isn't likely to help Sunak.
Ah more little Englanderism from people who cant look beyond these shores.
Try looking at the total mess the EU is in re migration and then explain to me why we would want to jump in to it.
Well it would annoy you for starters, so there's that.
Always good fun, but hardly the basis of a national policy
You don't really care about policy; you're just an angry partisan.
This is daft. Not even convinced it's effective politics: ...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the Mail
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him. Not clever at all.
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majority
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.
It's a European problem and can only be handled at the European level. The fact that the Tories have shat all over our relationship with the rest of Europe makes that harder than it needs to be, but Starmer should be applauded for trying.
What if a newly hard right EU decides on something like Rwanda? Do we eagerly join in with them just because it’s an EU policy, even though we decided that was too evil and immoral for the UK alone?
No. We need a solution at the European level but that doesn't mean we go along with something that's not right. There may be no solution that can be agreed by countries working together, but there will certainly be no solution if we don't even try.
So your rhetoric about a 'European solution' is really just a tactic to oppose the UK (or any other individual government) doing anything other than accepting more people.
The problem is Europe-wide, and so will only be solved or, more realistically, managed, at the European level. An example: we say 'they're safe in France and should stay there'. France says 'we take more than you already'. To resolve that we need to agree something with them. And for UK and France, read France and Italy, the same debate all over Europe. Now it may be that there is no solution that can be agreed on, but surely we should try? I don't want to be unkind, because you are such a fascinating poster, but it strikes me that the one engaging in rhetoric here is you not me.
I think Q2 2024 looks a good call for the GE. Anything later could be seen as a bit desperate.
Preceded by a voter friendly budget. Firstly an increase in the personal allowance to £15,000pa to help (nearly) everyone together with 2% reduction in employees NI to help the workers.
This is daft. Not even convinced it's effective politics: ...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the Mail
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him. Not clever at all.
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majority
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
In the last 7 days about 1400 small boat arrivals have been recorded. Three Bibby Stockholms needed for these alone.
Meanwhile both the Tories prison hulk and Rwanda plans have completely failed.
Banging on about their own failures isn't likely to help Sunak.
Ah more little Englanderism from people who cant look beyond these shores.
Try looking at the total mess the EU is in re migration and then explain to me why we would want to jump in to it.
Well it would annoy you for starters, so there's that.
Always good fun, but hardly the basis of a national policy
As usual, there is one policy that has been identified that would work. Cut off the demand for super cheap, undocumented labour.
The asylum seekers that I know via my church do not work, not least because it breaks the terms of their application.
Actually processing applications in reasonable time may help reduce the number undocumented.
One of the worst possible ways of dealing with asylum seekers is to process them over two to three years during which they cannot work or therefore integrate properly into the wider community. It really is bonkers.
The cost of extra border force and court officials will more than be made up by the tax revenue from having people able to work for an extra couple of years and maintain and develop skills rather than becoming dependent on the state. And that is just the fiscal benefit, social integration and social acceptance would be a lot higher if asylum seekers were working and supporting themselves.
This is daft. Not even convinced it's effective politics: ...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the Mail
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him. Not clever at all.
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majority
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
In the last 7 days about 1400 small boat arrivals have been recorded. Three Bibby Stockholms needed for these alone.
Meanwhile both the Tories prison hulk and Rwanda plans have completely failed.
Banging on about their own failures isn't likely to help Sunak.
Ah more little Englanderism from people who cant look beyond these shores.
Try looking at the total mess the EU is in re migration and then explain to me why we would want to jump in to it.
Well it would annoy you for starters, so there's that.
Always good fun, but hardly the basis of a national policy
You don't really care about policy; you're just an angry partisan.
The polls can be flattering Labour and Labour could still win a landslide. The Labour poll leads are so large that these are not mutually exclusive.
Electoral Calculus gives a Labour majority of 92 with vote shares of 42-30.
That's not a prediction, by the way, but it does illustrate the scale of the hole that the Tories are in. Losing by only 12pp wouldn't be a terrible result for the Tories compared to polls regularly putting them 22 points behind, but they'd still lose 170 seats.
23% of 2019 Tory voters is 10% of the electorate. Say the vast majority vote Tory, as Mike suggests - that's maybe 7 points. There are also a few Lab/LD voters who say they're not sure, to whom much the same applies, so knock a point off to make it 6 points. That reduces the Labour lead from 20 to 14. Still comfortable.
Personally I expect the majority of the uncertain Tories to sit the next election out - they can see the Government is exhausted, but actually voting for another party goes against the grain for them, so just let it happen. That was the decisive move in 1997, not a sudden revival of Tory fortunes on the day.
This is daft. Not even convinced it's effective politics: ...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the Mail
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him. Not clever at all.
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majority
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.
It's a European problem and can only be handled at the European level. The fact that the Tories have shat all over our relationship with the rest of Europe makes that harder than it needs to be, but Starmer should be applauded for trying.
What if a newly hard right EU decides on something like Rwanda? Do we eagerly join in with them just because it’s an EU policy, even though we decided that was too evil and immoral for the UK alone?
No. We need a solution at the European level but that doesn't mean we go along with something that's not right. There may be no solution that can be agreed by countries working together, but there will certainly be no solution if we don't even try.
"We need a solution at the European level but that doesn't mean we go along with something that's not right."
You clearly havent understood how the EU works
The current EU asylum systems focus on things like qualifying rules, and the humane treatment of refugees. The EU wouldn't and couldn't decide that you must export your refugees to Rwanda. No member state could be obliged to do so.
It is you who does not understand how the EU works.
LOL
Yes, yes yes.
All we need is for a UK PM to join a scheme he cant control and then to be told his refusing to take whatever the commission decide is anti communautaire. Well create another crisis with Europe within months of signing up.
I wonder how the rejoin polls will look like then ?
This is daft. Not even convinced it's effective politics: ...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the Mail
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him. Not clever at all.
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majority
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.
It's a European problem and can only be handled at the European level. The fact that the Tories have shat all over our relationship with the rest of Europe makes that harder than it needs to be, but Starmer should be applauded for trying.
What if a newly hard right EU decides on something like Rwanda? Do we eagerly join in with them just because it’s an EU policy, even though we decided that was too evil and immoral for the UK alone?
The Rwanda deal is for 1000 over 5 years. We had that many in 5 days last week.
It might just work as a deterrent. We don’t know until we actually TRY
If the whole EU can find some remote but safe island to send all these people to (much more likely given the size of the EU) what would you say? Would it suddenly become “acceptable”?
It is a fantasy to think that there is any country that wants to take these arrivals from us or the EU. Many of their own countries refuse them.
There are nine uninhabited islands in the Azores. Which belongs to Portugal and hence the EU. Could start there…
Are there? According to my checks there are nine islands and they're all populated.
“The 9 inhabited and 8 uninhabited islands of the Azores”
This is daft. Not even convinced it's effective politics: ...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the Mail
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him. Not clever at all.
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majority
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
In the last 7 days about 1400 small boat arrivals have been recorded. Three Bibby Stockholms needed for these alone.
Meanwhile both the Tories prison hulk and Rwanda plans have completely failed.
Banging on about their own failures isn't likely to help Sunak.
Ah more little Englanderism from people who cant look beyond these shores.
Try looking at the total mess the EU is in re migration and then explain to me why we would want to jump in to it.
Well it would annoy you for starters, so there's that.
Always good fun, but hardly the basis of a national policy
You don't really care about policy; you're just an angry partisan.
Usual guff
Are there no mirrors in your house?
Hell no. He has nothing to the left of the Telegraph. Maybe the odd Völkischer Beobachter, I couldn't say.
Ukrainian forces have recaptured the village of Andriivka in the eastern Donetsk region, marking one of the most significant battlefield gains in the area since nearby Bakhmut fell under Moscow’s control in May. https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1702589462226628701
...Ukraine's 3rd Separate Assault Brigade claimed that it had "eliminated" the intelligence chief of Russia's 72nd brigade, three battalion commanders "and almost all the infantry of the 72nd brigade, together with officers and a significant amount of equipment."..
I know nothing about these things but whilst any progress is good it does seem like if this village of 74 people in the 2001 census, is a significant gain, then surely a stalemate for another year or more is very likely.
This is daft. Not even convinced it's effective politics: ...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the Mail
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him. Not clever at all.
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majority
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.
It's a European problem and can only be handled at the European level. The fact that the Tories have shat all over our relationship with the rest of Europe makes that harder than it needs to be, but Starmer should be applauded for trying.
What if a newly hard right EU decides on something like Rwanda? Do we eagerly join in with them just because it’s an EU policy, even though we decided that was too evil and immoral for the UK alone?
No. We need a solution at the European level but that doesn't mean we go along with something that's not right. There may be no solution that can be agreed by countries working together, but there will certainly be no solution if we don't even try.
So your rhetoric about a 'European solution' is really just a tactic to oppose the UK (or any other individual government) doing anything other than accepting more people.
The problem is Europe-wide, and so will only be solved or, more realistically, managed, at the European level. An example: we say 'they're safe in France and should stay there'. France says 'we take more than you already'. To resolve that we need to agree something with them. And for UK and France, read France and Italy, the same debate all over Europe. Now it may be that there is no solution that can be agreed on, but surely we should try? I don't want to be unkind, because you are such a fascinating poster, but it strikes me that the one engaging in rhetoric here is you not me.
The mindset is simple - zero asylum seekers. The only people we allow to come here are people we want.
I understand the rationale for the latter point, but have to ask why after all these years post Brexit we are no further forward?
On refugees, there is a cold-heartedness amongst some Tories which truly is unBritish. We cannot set a zero target which despite their denials is clearly what they want - just as after Brexit the target was negative as they wanted (and achieved) the goal of making foreigners go home.
The UK - especially of we want to be "global Britain" - cannot pretend the rest of the world isn't there. We can't build walls and shut out a global problem. So any solution to refugees and migration will be global. But the right of the Tory party don't understand why these foreigners simply do as they are told.
This is daft. Not even convinced it's effective politics: ...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the Mail
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him. Not clever at all.
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majority
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.
We deported far more people who had arrived through irregular channels when we were in the EU than now.
It was the regular ones which were the problem. And migrants per se arent really the issue weve always been a mongrel nation. Its the fact that we are expanding the population at a rate our infrastructure cant support. There is no benefit to us in taking in 500000 people a year when we havent got the means to support them.
This is daft. Not even convinced it's effective politics: ...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the Mail
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him. Not clever at all.
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majority
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.
It's a European problem and can only be handled at the European level. The fact that the Tories have shat all over our relationship with the rest of Europe makes that harder than it needs to be, but Starmer should be applauded for trying.
What if a newly hard right EU decides on something like Rwanda? Do we eagerly join in with them just because it’s an EU policy, even though we decided that was too evil and immoral for the UK alone?
No. We need a solution at the European level but that doesn't mean we go along with something that's not right. There may be no solution that can be agreed by countries working together, but there will certainly be no solution if we don't even try.
"We need a solution at the European level but that doesn't mean we go along with something that's not right."
You clearly havent understood how the EU works
The current EU asylum systems focus on things like qualifying rules, and the humane treatment of refugees. The EU wouldn't and couldn't decide that you must export your refugees to Rwanda. No member state could be obliged to do so.
It is you who does not understand how the EU works.
LOL
Yes, yes yes.
All we need is for a UK PM to join a scheme he cant control and then to be told his refusing to take whatever the commission decide is anti communautaire. Well create another crisis with Europe within months of signing up.
I wonder how the rejoin polls will look like then ?
So, you sidestepped the point we were talking about, whether the EU could compel a country to export its refugees. Presumably because you now realise you were dead wrong and are embarrassed that you came in so stridently accusing someone else of not understanding how the EU works.
Obfuscation and angry partisan rhetoric aside, there's very little substance to anything you say. You're a guesser, a hack, aren't you?
This is daft. Not even convinced it's effective politics: ...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the Mail
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him. Not clever at all.
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majority
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
In the last 7 days about 1400 small boat arrivals have been recorded. Three Bibby Stockholms needed for these alone.
Meanwhile both the Tories prison hulk and Rwanda plans have completely failed.
Banging on about their own failures isn't likely to help Sunak.
Ah more little Englanderism from people who cant look beyond these shores.
Try looking at the total mess the EU is in re migration and then explain to me why we would want to jump in to it.
Well it would annoy you for starters, so there's that.
Always good fun, but hardly the basis of a national policy
You don't really care about policy; you're just an angry partisan.
This is daft. Not even convinced it's effective politics: ...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the Mail
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him. Not clever at all.
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majority
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
In the last 7 days about 1400 small boat arrivals have been recorded. Three Bibby Stockholms needed for these alone.
Meanwhile both the Tories prison hulk and Rwanda plans have completely failed.
Banging on about their own failures isn't likely to help Sunak.
Ah more little Englanderism from people who cant look beyond these shores.
Try looking at the total mess the EU is in re migration and then explain to me why we would want to jump in to it.
Well it would annoy you for starters, so there's that.
Always good fun, but hardly the basis of a national policy
You don't really care about policy; you're just an angry partisan.
This is daft. Not even convinced it's effective politics: ...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the Mail
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him. Not clever at all.
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majority
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.
It's a European problem and can only be handled at the European level. The fact that the Tories have shat all over our relationship with the rest of Europe makes that harder than it needs to be, but Starmer should be applauded for trying.
What if a newly hard right EU decides on something like Rwanda? Do we eagerly join in with them just because it’s an EU policy, even though we decided that was too evil and immoral for the UK alone?
The Rwanda deal is for 1000 over 5 years. We had that many in 5 days last week.
It might just work as a deterrent. We don’t know until we actually TRY
If the whole EU can find some remote but safe island to send all these people to (much more likely given the size of the EU) what would you say? Would it suddenly become “acceptable”?
It is a fantasy to think that there is any country that wants to take these arrivals from us or the EU. Many of their own countries refuse them.
There are nine uninhabited islands in the Azores. Which belongs to Portugal and hence the EU. Could start there…
Are there? According to my checks there are nine islands and they're all populated.
“The 9 inhabited and 8 uninhabited islands of the Azores”
So we have apparently 8 uninhabited Azores islands... I still can't find them. This is a serious question, I don't know the Azores. Where are they? Are we talking about tiny little rocks? I've found something called Ilhéu do Monchique, which is about 50 metres long. Is that your planned destination for these refugees?
This is daft. Not even convinced it's effective politics: ...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the Mail
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him. Not clever at all.
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majority
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.
It's a European problem and can only be handled at the European level. The fact that the Tories have shat all over our relationship with the rest of Europe makes that harder than it needs to be, but Starmer should be applauded for trying.
What if a newly hard right EU decides on something like Rwanda? Do we eagerly join in with them just because it’s an EU policy, even though we decided that was too evil and immoral for the UK alone?
No. We need a solution at the European level but that doesn't mean we go along with something that's not right. There may be no solution that can be agreed by countries working together, but there will certainly be no solution if we don't even try.
So your rhetoric about a 'European solution' is really just a tactic to oppose the UK (or any other individual government) doing anything other than accepting more people.
The problem is Europe-wide, and so will only be solved or, more realistically, managed, at the European level. An example: we say 'they're safe in France and should stay there'. France says 'we take more than you already'. To resolve that we need to agree something with them. And for UK and France, read France and Italy, the same debate all over Europe. Now it may be that there is no solution that can be agreed on, but surely we should try? I don't want to be unkind, because you are such a fascinating poster, but it strikes me that the one engaging in rhetoric here is you not me.
The European migrant issue has been a problem since 2015 and they havent solved it. And they have no prospect of doing so. So quite how signing up to someone elses problem will solve ours remains a mystery.
This is daft. Not even convinced it's effective politics: ...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the Mail
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him. Not clever at all.
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majority
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.
It's a European problem and can only be handled at the European level. The fact that the Tories have shat all over our relationship with the rest of Europe makes that harder than it needs to be, but Starmer should be applauded for trying.
What if a newly hard right EU decides on something like Rwanda? Do we eagerly join in with them just because it’s an EU policy, even though we decided that was too evil and immoral for the UK alone?
The Rwanda deal is for 1000 over 5 years. We had that many in 5 days last week.
It might just work as a deterrent. We don’t know until we actually TRY
If the whole EU can find some remote but safe island to send all these people to (much more likely given the size of the EU) what would you say? Would it suddenly become “acceptable”?
It is a fantasy to think that there is any country that wants to take these arrivals from us or the EU. Many of their own countries refuse them.
There are nine uninhabited islands in the Azores. Which belongs to Portugal and hence the EU. Could start there…
Are there? According to my checks there are nine islands and they're all populated.
“The 9 inhabited and 8 uninhabited islands of the Azores”
So we have apparently 8 uninhabited Azores islands... I still can't find them. This is a serious question, I don't know the Azores. Where are they? Are we talking about tiny little rocks? I've found something called Ilhéu do Monchique, which is about 50 metres long. Is that your planned destination for these refugees?
Amazingly, I haven’t actually gone into detailed plans for each individual Azore
I am pointing out that there are plenty of uninhabited places in the ambit of the EU. The French probably have dozens in quite unpleasant places - Kerguelen springs to mind
Enforced returns by year from the ONS. The Tories want to portray the problem as being out there, but it's their own incompetence at governance that's a large part of what's going on.
This is daft. Not even convinced it's effective politics: ...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the Mail
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him. Not clever at all.
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majority
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.
It's a European problem and can only be handled at the European level. The fact that the Tories have shat all over our relationship with the rest of Europe makes that harder than it needs to be, but Starmer should be applauded for trying.
What if a newly hard right EU decides on something like Rwanda? Do we eagerly join in with them just because it’s an EU policy, even though we decided that was too evil and immoral for the UK alone?
The Rwanda deal is for 1000 over 5 years. We had that many in 5 days last week.
It might just work as a deterrent. We don’t know until we actually TRY
If the whole EU can find some remote but safe island to send all these people to (much more likely given the size of the EU) what would you say? Would it suddenly become “acceptable”?
It is a fantasy to think that there is any country that wants to take these arrivals from us or the EU. Many of their own countries refuse them.
There are nine uninhabited islands in the Azores. Which belongs to Portugal and hence the EU. Could start there…
Are there? According to my checks there are nine islands and they're all populated.
“The 9 inhabited and 8 uninhabited islands of the Azores”
So we have apparently 8 uninhabited Azores islands... I still can't find them. This is a serious question, I don't know the Azores. Where are they? Are we talking about tiny little rocks? I've found something called Ilhéu do Monchique, which is about 50 metres long. Is that your planned destination for these refugees?
Amazingly, I haven’t actually gone into detailed plans for each individual Azore
I am pointing out that there are plenty of uninhabited places in the ambit of the EU. The French probably have dozens in quite unpleasant places - Kerguelen springs to mind
There is detail, and then there is being able to actually name a place or find it on a map rather than in a quote from a random website.....
Enforced returns by year from the ONS. The Tories want to portray the problem as being out there, but it's their own incompetence at governance that's a large part of what's going on.
The simple fact is that this government is crap at everything and everywhere. The voters can see it, but this government cannot.
The polls can be flattering Labour and Labour could still win a landslide. The Labour poll leads are so large that these are not mutually exclusive.
Electoral Calculus gives a Labour majority of 92 with vote shares of 42-30.
That's not a prediction, by the way, but it does illustrate the scale of the hole that the Tories are in. Losing by only 12pp wouldn't be a terrible result for the Tories compared to polls regularly putting them 22 points behind, but they'd still lose 170 seats.
The 1997 voteshares were Labour 43% Conservatives 30%. So for Labour to only get a majority of 92 compared to the 179 majority Blair got on an almost identical voteshare in 1997 shows the electoral system does not work as well for Labour as back then.
Adding the Labour seats lost to the SNP in Scotland too
No, because there are no methods other than death, impeachment and the 25th to remove him if he doesn't want to stand down. Which he doesn't. At least part of his thinking is that he's going to have to be POTUS to pardon that shitstain Hunter.
Is it ? I seriously doubt he'd do any such thing.
If Biden was re elected of course he would pardon Hunter
Enforced returns by year from the ONS. The Tories want to portray the problem as being out there, but it's their own incompetence at governance that's a large part of what's going on.
But we didn’t legally Brexit until 2020. So that mild decline from 2016 can’t be blamed on Brexit. More likely it was a byproduct of a drop in EU citizens coming here, psychologically deterred by Brexit
Overall it looks more like a failure of governance across the board - on that I agree with you. This govt has been crap on migration; almost as bad as the one before it
This is daft. Not even convinced it's effective politics: ...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the Mail
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him. Not clever at all.
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majority
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.
It's a European problem and can only be handled at the European level. The fact that the Tories have shat all over our relationship with the rest of Europe makes that harder than it needs to be, but Starmer should be applauded for trying.
What if a newly hard right EU decides on something like Rwanda? Do we eagerly join in with them just because it’s an EU policy, even though we decided that was too evil and immoral for the UK alone?
The Rwanda deal is for 1000 over 5 years. We had that many in 5 days last week.
It might just work as a deterrent. We don’t know until we actually TRY
If the whole EU can find some remote but safe island to send all these people to (much more likely given the size of the EU) what would you say? Would it suddenly become “acceptable”?
It is a fantasy to think that there is any country that wants to take these arrivals from us or the EU. Many of their own countries refuse them.
There are nine uninhabited islands in the Azores. Which belongs to Portugal and hence the EU. Could start there…
Are there? According to my checks there are nine islands and they're all populated.
“The 9 inhabited and 8 uninhabited islands of the Azores”
So we have apparently 8 uninhabited Azores islands... I still can't find them. This is a serious question, I don't know the Azores. Where are they? Are we talking about tiny little rocks? I've found something called Ilhéu do Monchique, which is about 50 metres long. Is that your planned destination for these refugees?
Amazingly, I haven’t actually gone into detailed plans for each individual Azore
I am pointing out that there are plenty of uninhabited places in the ambit of the EU. The French probably have dozens in quite unpleasant places - Kerguelen springs to mind
Ok, well, I was just trying to take your idea seriously but do what I always do and actually check. FWIW it reads like a bad idea because the small size of the Azores means that large numbers would quickly add up to a large % increase in population, and my guess is that the Azores doesn't have brilliant infrastructure for large populations. E.g. what's the source of fresh water? The archipelago appears to have a moderate population density, large than that of Spain, lower than that of mainland Portugal, so it's "uninhabited"ness is highly questionable.
Just some basic fact checking to assess the viability. I'm starting to come to a conclusion that sending large numbers of refugees in relatively remote areas is a bad idea but I'm still open to arguments if I've missed something.
This is daft. Not even convinced it's effective politics: ...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the Mail
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him. Not clever at all.
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majority
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.
It's a European problem and can only be handled at the European level. The fact that the Tories have shat all over our relationship with the rest of Europe makes that harder than it needs to be, but Starmer should be applauded for trying.
What if a newly hard right EU decides on something like Rwanda? Do we eagerly join in with them just because it’s an EU policy, even though we decided that was too evil and immoral for the UK alone?
The Rwanda deal is for 1000 over 5 years. We had that many in 5 days last week.
It might just work as a deterrent. We don’t know until we actually TRY
If the whole EU can find some remote but safe island to send all these people to (much more likely given the size of the EU) what would you say? Would it suddenly become “acceptable”?
It is a fantasy to think that there is any country that wants to take these arrivals from us or the EU. Many of their own countries refuse them.
There are nine uninhabited islands in the Azores. Which belongs to Portugal and hence the EU. Could start there…
Are there? According to my checks there are nine islands and they're all populated.
“The 9 inhabited and 8 uninhabited islands of the Azores”
So we have apparently 8 uninhabited Azores islands... I still can't find them. This is a serious question, I don't know the Azores. Where are they? Are we talking about tiny little rocks? I've found something called Ilhéu do Monchique, which is about 50 metres long. Is that your planned destination for these refugees?
Amazingly, I haven’t actually gone into detailed plans for each individual Azore
I am pointing out that there are plenty of uninhabited places in the ambit of the EU. The French probably have dozens in quite unpleasant places - Kerguelen springs to mind
There is detail, and then there is being able to actually name a place or find it on a map rather than in a quote from a random website.....
I can certainly pinpoint Kerguelen. It’s a large archipelago in the sub Antarctic. It has about 3 scientists living there. It is grim but it is habitable (Matthew Paris spent several months there, famously)
Kerguelen would certainly be a deterrent and could house hundreds of thousands
I had a top up on the SNP to hold the by election.
Starmer could be in deep shit if he fails to win any of the three by elections.
He won't be in deep shit, any more than he was after failing to gain Uxbridge. FWIW - I think he should win Tamworth, might just miss out in Mid-Beds and will probably lose Rutherglen to the SNP.
None of that would mean he's not on course to win. It will just reinforce his caution.
On current polls Labour should gain Rutherglen but the Tories would hold Mid Bedfordshire and Tamworth. Although on the Selby swing they wouldn't
This is daft. Not even convinced it's effective politics: ...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the Mail
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him. Not clever at all.
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majority
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.
We deported far more people who had arrived through irregular channels when we were in the EU than now.
It was the regular ones which were the problem. And migrants per se arent really the issue weve always been a mongrel nation. Its the fact that we are expanding the population at a rate our infrastructure cant support. There is no benefit to us in taking in 500000 people a year when we havent got the means to support them.
Immigration was 1.2 million in 2022, for a net figure of 606,000. This is a record high. That's after Brexit, after we've taken back control, under this Government. If you think that figure is too high, can I ask, who are you planning to vote for? Presumably you will not be voting for the party in charge when this figure happened...?
Immigration was lower under the last Labour government. It was lower under the coalition government.
This is daft. Not even convinced it's effective politics: ...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the Mail
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him. Not clever at all.
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majority
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.
It's a European problem and can only be handled at the European level. The fact that the Tories have shat all over our relationship with the rest of Europe makes that harder than it needs to be, but Starmer should be applauded for trying.
What if a newly hard right EU decides on something like Rwanda? Do we eagerly join in with them just because it’s an EU policy, even though we decided that was too evil and immoral for the UK alone?
No. We need a solution at the European level but that doesn't mean we go along with something that's not right. There may be no solution that can be agreed by countries working together, but there will certainly be no solution if we don't even try.
So your rhetoric about a 'European solution' is really just a tactic to oppose the UK (or any other individual government) doing anything other than accepting more people.
The problem is Europe-wide, and so will only be solved or, more realistically, managed, at the European level. An example: we say 'they're safe in France and should stay there'. France says 'we take more than you already'. To resolve that we need to agree something with them. And for UK and France, read France and Italy, the same debate all over Europe. Now it may be that there is no solution that can be agreed on, but surely we should try? I don't want to be unkind, because you are such a fascinating poster, but it strikes me that the one engaging in rhetoric here is you not me.
The European migrant issue has been a problem since 2015 and they havent solved it. And they have no prospect of doing so. So quite how signing up to someone elses problem will solve ours remains a mystery.
There's no such thing as our problem and their problem - it is the same problem. This is a problem that is only going to get worse, BTW, and will change our societies massively whether we let people in or not.
This is daft. Not even convinced it's effective politics: ...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the Mail
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him. Not clever at all.
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majority
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.
We deported far more people who had arrived through irregular channels when we were in the EU than now.
It was the regular ones which were the problem. And migrants per se arent really the issue weve always been a mongrel nation. Its the fact that we are expanding the population at a rate our infrastructure cant support. There is no benefit to us in taking in 500000 people a year when we havent got the means to support them.
Immigration was 1.2 million in 2022, for a net figure of 606,000. This is a record high. That's after Brexit, after we've taken back control, under this Government. If you think that figure is too high, can I ask, who are you planning to vote for? Presumably you will not be voting for the party in charge when this figure happened...?
Immigration was lower under the last Labour government. It was lower under the coalition government.
Im planning to spoil my vote or vote for the maddest bastard on the list. Mick Lynch on a Sinn Fein ticket sounds about right. Starmer and Sunak are simply different shades of the same colour, The electorate isnt really being offered a choice.
Ukrainian forces have recaptured the village of Andriivka in the eastern Donetsk region, marking one of the most significant battlefield gains in the area since nearby Bakhmut fell under Moscow’s control in May. https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1702589462226628701
...Ukraine's 3rd Separate Assault Brigade claimed that it had "eliminated" the intelligence chief of Russia's 72nd brigade, three battalion commanders "and almost all the infantry of the 72nd brigade, together with officers and a significant amount of equipment."..
I know nothing about these things but whilst any progress is good it does seem like if this village of 74 people in the 2001 census, is a significant gain, then surely a stalemate for another year or more is very likely.
I can't recall the detail from analyses, however these things are usually topology (high / low ground), landscape features (rivers, forests) or communication lines (roads, railways).
(That's a statement of the obvious to most people - sorry).
I had a top up on the SNP to hold the by election.
Starmer could be in deep shit if he fails to win any of the three by elections.
He won't be in deep shit, any more than he was after failing to gain Uxbridge. FWIW - I think he should win Tamworth, might just miss out in Mid-Beds and will probably lose Rutherglen to the SNP.
None of that would mean he's not on course to win. It will just reinforce his caution.
On current polls Labour should gain Rutherglen but the Tories would hold Mid Bedfordshire and Tamworth. Although on the Selby swing they wouldn't
I think Labour will gain Rutherglen, lose Tamworth, and mid-Beds will be interesting, based on no real information other than encouraging feedback from Labour people in Scotland when I spoke to them at a wedding in late August.
This is daft. Not even convinced it's effective politics: ...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the Mail
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him. Not clever at all.
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majority
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.
It's a European problem and can only be handled at the European level. The fact that the Tories have shat all over our relationship with the rest of Europe makes that harder than it needs to be, but Starmer should be applauded for trying.
What if a newly hard right EU decides on something like Rwanda? Do we eagerly join in with them just because it’s an EU policy, even though we decided that was too evil and immoral for the UK alone?
The Rwanda deal is for 1000 over 5 years. We had that many in 5 days last week.
It might just work as a deterrent. We don’t know until we actually TRY
If the whole EU can find some remote but safe island to send all these people to (much more likely given the size of the EU) what would you say? Would it suddenly become “acceptable”?
It is a fantasy to think that there is any country that wants to take these arrivals from us or the EU. Many of their own countries refuse them.
There are nine uninhabited islands in the Azores. Which belongs to Portugal and hence the EU. Could start there…
Are there? According to my checks there are nine islands and they're all populated.
“The 9 inhabited and 8 uninhabited islands of the Azores”
So we have apparently 8 uninhabited Azores islands... I still can't find them. This is a serious question, I don't know the Azores. Where are they? Are we talking about tiny little rocks? I've found something called Ilhéu do Monchique, which is about 50 metres long. Is that your planned destination for these refugees?
Amazingly, I haven’t actually gone into detailed plans for each individual Azore
I am pointing out that there are plenty of uninhabited places in the ambit of the EU. The French probably have dozens in quite unpleasant places - Kerguelen springs to mind
There is detail, and then there is being able to actually name a place or find it on a map rather than in a quote from a random website.....
I can certainly pinpoint Kerguelen. It’s a large archipelago in the sub Antarctic. It has about 3 scientists living there. It is grim but it is habitable (Matthew Paris spent several months there, famously)
Kerguelen would certainly be a deterrent and could house hundreds of thousands
One of the more arresting sites in Quimper is the bus heading to Kerguelen - the Brittany village that gave its name to the admiral who gave his name to the island.
Enforced returns by year from the ONS. The Tories want to portray the problem as being out there, but it's their own incompetence at governance that's a large part of what's going on.
But we didn’t legally Brexit until 2020. So that mild decline from 2016 can’t be blamed on Brexit. More likely it was a byproduct of a drop in EU citizens coming here, psychologically deterred by Brexit
Overall it looks more like a failure of governance across the board - on that I agree with you. This govt has been crap on migration; almost as bad as the one before it
That doesn't really track... the main driver in the change seems to be the non-EU enforced returns. No idea what the reasons are but I can't see how it would be due to deterred EU citizens, since it's the wrong category and the wrong mechanism.
This is daft. Not even convinced it's effective politics: ...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the Mail
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him. Not clever at all.
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majority
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.
We deported far more people who had arrived through irregular channels when we were in the EU than now.
It was the regular ones which were the problem. And migrants per se arent really the issue weve always been a mongrel nation. Its the fact that we are expanding the population at a rate our infrastructure cant support. There is no benefit to us in taking in 500000 people a year when we havent got the means to support them.
Immigration was 1.2 million in 2022, for a net figure of 606,000. This is a record high. That's after Brexit, after we've taken back control, under this Government. If you think that figure is too high, can I ask, who are you planning to vote for? Presumably you will not be voting for the party in charge when this figure happened...?
Immigration was lower under the last Labour government. It was lower under the coalition government.
If Blair had put transition controls on free movement from the new accession nations for 7 years like Germany in 2004 Brexit may never have happened. The 2016 EU referendum would likely have seen a narrow Leave win.
As it is we just now have the same points system for EU as non EU migrants. If that isn't tough enough for you then you likely vote Reform UK
The polls can be flattering Labour and Labour could still win a landslide. The Labour poll leads are so large that these are not mutually exclusive.
Electoral Calculus gives a Labour majority of 92 with vote shares of 42-30.
That's not a prediction, by the way, but it does illustrate the scale of the hole that the Tories are in. Losing by only 12pp wouldn't be a terrible result for the Tories compared to polls regularly putting them 22 points behind, but they'd still lose 170 seats.
This is daft. Not even convinced it's effective politics: ...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the Mail
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him. Not clever at all.
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majority
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.
It's a European problem and can only be handled at the European level. The fact that the Tories have shat all over our relationship with the rest of Europe makes that harder than it needs to be, but Starmer should be applauded for trying.
What if a newly hard right EU decides on something like Rwanda? Do we eagerly join in with them just because it’s an EU policy, even though we decided that was too evil and immoral for the UK alone?
The Rwanda deal is for 1000 over 5 years. We had that many in 5 days last week.
It might just work as a deterrent. We don’t know until we actually TRY
If the whole EU can find some remote but safe island to send all these people to (much more likely given the size of the EU) what would you say? Would it suddenly become “acceptable”?
It is a fantasy to think that there is any country that wants to take these arrivals from us or the EU. Many of their own countries refuse them.
There are nine uninhabited islands in the Azores. Which belongs to Portugal and hence the EU. Could start there…
Are there? According to my checks there are nine islands and they're all populated.
“The 9 inhabited and 8 uninhabited islands of the Azores”
So we have apparently 8 uninhabited Azores islands... I still can't find them. This is a serious question, I don't know the Azores. Where are they? Are we talking about tiny little rocks? I've found something called Ilhéu do Monchique, which is about 50 metres long. Is that your planned destination for these refugees?
Amazingly, I haven’t actually gone into detailed plans for each individual Azore
I am pointing out that there are plenty of uninhabited places in the ambit of the EU. The French probably have dozens in quite unpleasant places - Kerguelen springs to mind
There is detail, and then there is being able to actually name a place or find it on a map rather than in a quote from a random website.....
I can certainly pinpoint Kerguelen. It’s a large archipelago in the sub Antarctic. It has about 3 scientists living there. It is grim but it is habitable (Matthew Paris spent several months there, famously)
Kerguelen would certainly be a deterrent and could house hundreds of thousands
The islands and skerries of the Sound of Harris would do.
Enforced returns by year from the ONS. The Tories want to portray the problem as being out there, but it's their own incompetence at governance that's a large part of what's going on.
But we didn’t legally Brexit until 2020. So that mild decline from 2016 can’t be blamed on Brexit. More likely it was a byproduct of a drop in EU citizens coming here, psychologically deterred by Brexit
Overall it looks more like a failure of governance across the board - on that I agree with you. This govt has been crap on migration; almost as bad as the one before it
That doesn't really track... the main driver in the change seems to be the non-EU enforced returns. No idea what the reasons are but I can't see how it would be due to deterred EU citizens, since it's the wrong category and the wrong mechanism.
One of the main reasons is the massive slowdown in processing applications and thus huge increase in the waiting list, paralleling the massive waits in the NHS, the courts system and everything else the Government is in charge of.
This is daft. Not even convinced it's effective politics: ...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the Mail
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him. Not clever at all.
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majority
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.
We deported far more people who had arrived through irregular channels when we were in the EU than now.
It was the regular ones which were the problem. And migrants per se arent really the issue weve always been a mongrel nation. Its the fact that we are expanding the population at a rate our infrastructure cant support. There is no benefit to us in taking in 500000 people a year when we havent got the means to support them.
Immigration was 1.2 million in 2022, for a net figure of 606,000. This is a record high. That's after Brexit, after we've taken back control, under this Government. If you think that figure is too high, can I ask, who are you planning to vote for? Presumably you will not be voting for the party in charge when this figure happened...?
Immigration was lower under the last Labour government. It was lower under the coalition government.
If Blair had put transition controls on free movement from the new accession nations for 7 years like Germany in 2004 Brexit may never have happened. The 2016 EU referendum would likely have seen a narrow Leave win.
As it is we just now have the same points system for EU as non EU migrants. If that isn't tough enough for you then you likely vote Reform UK
This Sean Thomas guy has missed something. There is another good French food other than the croissant - the traditional French baguette. So much better than the crap British knock-offs. I think there must be something different about the flour. French one tastes delicious but goes off in hours but the taste when fresh is just fantastic. Particularly with some Normandy salted butter and either confiture or jambon/fromage.
I don't wholly agree with OGH on this - it's an idea he has floated consistently for months.
Redfield & Wilton have 19% of 2019 Conservative voters saying Don't Know (allowing for likelihood to vote) and 53% of Conservative 2019 voters staying loyal. Stripping out the DKs puts the latter figure up to 65% so perhaps the pollsters are to a degree anticipating the return of the 2019 Tory voters - I believe Opinium does that as part of its methodology.
If YouGov doesn't that might explain why its Conservative ratings are 3-4% below those of other pollsters such as R&W.
R&W have 15% of the 2019 Conservative vote going to Labour - that's nearly 7% of the electorate but that doesn't wholly explain the high Labour ratings. According to R&W, Labour's 2023 vote consists of 90% of its 2019 vote, 15% of the 2019 Conservative vote, 20% of the 2019 LD vote, 15% of the 2019 Green vote and 56% of those who Didn't Vote last time (presumably mainly new voters).
Expecting 2019 Conservative voters who have gone either DK or to Reform to return en masse to the Conservatives at the first whiff of electoral gunpowder isn't so far backed by any polling evidence. The likelihood is most will abstain - some will return but not in the numbers Sunak needs.
The polls can be flattering Labour and Labour could still win a landslide. The Labour poll leads are so large that these are not mutually exclusive.
Electoral Calculus gives a Labour majority of 92 with vote shares of 42-30.
That's not a prediction, by the way, but it does illustrate the scale of the hole that the Tories are in. Losing by only 12pp wouldn't be a terrible result for the Tories compared to polls regularly putting them 22 points behind, but they'd still lose 170 seats.
a pedant writes
grumblegrumble
itsnotalandslideifitisntthreefigures
grumblegrumble
Quite, but while all the talk of of the improbability of a large Labour Majority you have to acknowledge that there is no compelling reason why the polls should not move even further in Labour's direction as the GE nears. I'm not saying that will happen, but I would say that the likelihood of an increasing poll lead for Labour is no more nor less great than a decline.
Where would that put the Conservatives in terms of seats? Any advance on a dozen?
This is daft. Not even convinced it's effective politics: ...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the Mail
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him. Not clever at all.
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majority
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.
It's a European problem and can only be handled at the European level. The fact that the Tories have shat all over our relationship with the rest of Europe makes that harder than it needs to be, but Starmer should be applauded for trying.
What if a newly hard right EU decides on something like Rwanda? Do we eagerly join in with them just because it’s an EU policy, even though we decided that was too evil and immoral for the UK alone?
The Rwanda deal is for 1000 over 5 years. We had that many in 5 days last week.
It might just work as a deterrent. We don’t know until we actually TRY
If the whole EU can find some remote but safe island to send all these people to (much more likely given the size of the EU) what would you say? Would it suddenly become “acceptable”?
It is a fantasy to think that there is any country that wants to take these arrivals from us or the EU. Many of their own countries refuse them.
There are nine uninhabited islands in the Azores. Which belongs to Portugal and hence the EU. Could start there…
Are there? According to my checks there are nine islands and they're all populated.
“The 9 inhabited and 8 uninhabited islands of the Azores”
So we have apparently 8 uninhabited Azores islands... I still can't find them. This is a serious question, I don't know the Azores. Where are they? Are we talking about tiny little rocks? I've found something called Ilhéu do Monchique, which is about 50 metres long. Is that your planned destination for these refugees?
Amazingly, I haven’t actually gone into detailed plans for each individual Azore
I am pointing out that there are plenty of uninhabited places in the ambit of the EU. The French probably have dozens in quite unpleasant places - Kerguelen springs to mind
There is detail, and then there is being able to actually name a place or find it on a map rather than in a quote from a random website.....
I can certainly pinpoint Kerguelen. It’s a large archipelago in the sub Antarctic. It has about 3 scientists living there. It is grim but it is habitable (Matthew Paris spent several months there, famously)
Kerguelen would certainly be a deterrent and could house hundreds of thousands
Not sure how easy it is to build cities on a glacier in the most remote islands on earth, but assuming that is possible, that gives a solution for a couple of months worth of immigrants to the EU. Next?
Ukrainian forces have recaptured the village of Andriivka in the eastern Donetsk region, marking one of the most significant battlefield gains in the area since nearby Bakhmut fell under Moscow’s control in May. https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1702589462226628701
...Ukraine's 3rd Separate Assault Brigade claimed that it had "eliminated" the intelligence chief of Russia's 72nd brigade, three battalion commanders "and almost all the infantry of the 72nd brigade, together with officers and a significant amount of equipment."..
I know nothing about these things but whilst any progress is good it does seem like if this village of 74 people in the 2001 census, is a significant gain, then surely a stalemate for another year or more is very likely.
I had a top up on the SNP to hold the by election.
Starmer could be in deep shit if he fails to win any of the three by elections.
He won't be in deep shit, any more than he was after failing to gain Uxbridge. FWIW - I think he should win Tamworth, might just miss out in Mid-Beds and will probably lose Rutherglen to the SNP.
None of that would mean he's not on course to win. It will just reinforce his caution.
On current polls Labour should gain Rutherglen but the Tories would hold Mid Bedfordshire and Tamworth. Although on the Selby swing they wouldn't
LAB will be very disappointed if they don't win Rutherglen comfortably.
I had a top up on the SNP to hold the by election.
Starmer could be in deep shit if he fails to win any of the three by elections.
He won't be in deep shit, any more than he was after failing to gain Uxbridge. FWIW - I think he should win Tamworth, might just miss out in Mid-Beds and will probably lose Rutherglen to the SNP.
None of that would mean he's not on course to win. It will just reinforce his caution.
On current polls Labour should gain Rutherglen but the Tories would hold Mid Bedfordshire and Tamworth. Although on the Selby swing they wouldn't
LAB will be very disappointed if they don't win Rutherglen comfortably.
If they win Rutherglen by 1 vote, they will be delighted. A win is a win.
This is daft. Not even convinced it's effective politics: ...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the Mail
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him. Not clever at all.
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majority
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.
It's a European problem and can only be handled at the European level. The fact that the Tories have shat all over our relationship with the rest of Europe makes that harder than it needs to be, but Starmer should be applauded for trying.
What if a newly hard right EU decides on something like Rwanda? Do we eagerly join in with them just because it’s an EU policy, even though we decided that was too evil and immoral for the UK alone?
The Rwanda deal is for 1000 over 5 years. We had that many in 5 days last week.
It might just work as a deterrent. We don’t know until we actually TRY
If the whole EU can find some remote but safe island to send all these people to (much more likely given the size of the EU) what would you say? Would it suddenly become “acceptable”?
It is a fantasy to think that there is any country that wants to take these arrivals from us or the EU. Many of their own countries refuse them.
There are nine uninhabited islands in the Azores. Which belongs to Portugal and hence the EU. Could start there…
Are there? According to my checks there are nine islands and they're all populated.
“The 9 inhabited and 8 uninhabited islands of the Azores”
So we have apparently 8 uninhabited Azores islands... I still can't find them. This is a serious question, I don't know the Azores. Where are they? Are we talking about tiny little rocks? I've found something called Ilhéu do Monchique, which is about 50 metres long. Is that your planned destination for these refugees?
Amazingly, I haven’t actually gone into detailed plans for each individual Azore
I am pointing out that there are plenty of uninhabited places in the ambit of the EU. The French probably have dozens in quite unpleasant places - Kerguelen springs to mind
There is detail, and then there is being able to actually name a place or find it on a map rather than in a quote from a random website.....
I can certainly pinpoint Kerguelen. It’s a large archipelago in the sub Antarctic. It has about 3 scientists living there. It is grim but it is habitable (Matthew Paris spent several months there, famously)
Kerguelen would certainly be a deterrent and could house hundreds of thousands
Not sure how easy it is to build cities on a glacier in the most remote islands on earth, but assuming that is possible, that gives a solution for a couple of months worth of immigrants to the EU. Next?
Also, given the state of the Merchant Navy, how many British-registered prison ships are there to take them to Kerguelen? No airport, remember. It would be like the First Fleet and Botany Bay. Only, without the First Fleet.
Enforced returns by year from the ONS. The Tories want to portray the problem as being out there, but it's their own incompetence at governance that's a large part of what's going on.
But we didn’t legally Brexit until 2020. So that mild decline from 2016 can’t be blamed on Brexit. More likely it was a byproduct of a drop in EU citizens coming here, psychologically deterred by Brexit
Overall it looks more like a failure of governance across the board - on that I agree with you. This govt has been crap on migration; almost as bad as the one before it
That doesn't really track... the main driver in the change seems to be the non-EU enforced returns. No idea what the reasons are but I can't see how it would be due to deterred EU citizens, since it's the wrong category and the wrong mechanism.
One of the main reasons is the massive slowdown in processing applications and thus huge increase in the waiting list, paralleling the massive waits in the NHS, the courts system and everything else the Government is in charge of.
The waiting list of voters desperate to kick them out seems to be growing proportionately to the other lists too....
I don't wholly agree with OGH on this - it's an idea he has floated consistently for months.
Redfield & Wilton have 19% of 2019 Conservative voters saying Don't Know (allowing for likelihood to vote) and 53% of Conservative 2019 voters staying loyal. Stripping out the DKs puts the latter figure up to 65% so perhaps the pollsters are to a degree anticipating the return of the 2019 Tory voters - I believe Opinium does that as part of its methodology.
If YouGov doesn't that might explain why its Conservative ratings are 3-4% below those of other pollsters such as R&W.
R&W have 15% of the 2019 Conservative vote going to Labour - that's nearly 7% of the electorate but that doesn't wholly explain the high Labour ratings. According to R&W, Labour's 2023 vote consists of 90% of its 2019 vote, 15% of the 2019 Conservative vote, 20% of the 2019 LD vote, 15% of the 2019 Green vote and 56% of those who Didn't Vote last time (presumably mainly new voters).
Expecting 2019 Conservative voters who have gone either DK or to Reform to return en masse to the Conservatives at the first whiff of electoral gunpowder isn't so far backed by any polling evidence. The likelihood is most will abstain - some will return but not in the numbers Sunak needs.
Standing shoulder to shoulder with you, Stodgy, on this one.
One hesitates to disagree with Our Venerable Host, but I think he may just be calling it wrong for once.
This Sean Thomas guy has missed something. There is another good French food other than the croissant - the traditional French baguette. So much better than the crap British knock-offs. I think there must be something different about the flour. French one tastes delicious but goes off in hours but the taste when fresh is just fantastic. Particularly with some Normandy salted butter and either confiture or jambon/fromage.
WTF does Sean Thomas know.
Our resident expert on such matters is Leon who thinks the opposite!
Very good. Isn't confit de canard and/or a steak frites a staple everywhere still which takes some beating or is that one of the things done to death.
My experience is that French food is simply stuck, with everyone else moving forward. Prices and quality have moved the wrong ways as well.
Rather like the lower end French wine production, in many ways.
I find it mindblowing that the French queue up at that whatever that steak place is called where they give you those pink slabs of steak off a serving plate.
Very good. Isn't confit de canard and/or a steak frites a staple everywhere still which takes some beating or is that one of the things done to death.
If you find a suspiciously good value confit de canard I am reliably told it will be a mix of tinned and frozen. Most often
Steak frites is reliable. I had a lovely one yesterday. But if French food is reduced to steak frites as the reliable dish that’s like Britain in about 1974
I am pointing out that there are plenty of uninhabited places in the ambit of the EU. The French probably have dozens in quite unpleasant places - Kerguelen springs to mind
This is a threadbare fantasy. There is no airstrip on Kerguelen.
Do tow backs (at gunpoint) or live with the arrivals. Those are the options.
Enforced returns by year from the ONS. The Tories want to portray the problem as being out there, but it's their own incompetence at governance that's a large part of what's going on.
But we didn’t legally Brexit until 2020. So that mild decline from 2016 can’t be blamed on Brexit. More likely it was a byproduct of a drop in EU citizens coming here, psychologically deterred by Brexit
Overall it looks more like a failure of governance across the board - on that I agree with you. This govt has been crap on migration; almost as bad as the one before it
That doesn't really track... the main driver in the change seems to be the non-EU enforced returns. No idea what the reasons are but I can't see how it would be due to deterred EU citizens, since it's the wrong category and the wrong mechanism.
One of the main reasons is the massive slowdown in processing applications and thus huge increase in the waiting list, paralleling the massive waits in the NHS, the courts system and everything else the Government is in charge of.
The waiting list of voters desperate to kick them out seems to be growing proportionately to the other lists too....
Add this one to the list.
Mrs PtP has just booked her driving test. Earliest she could get is 18th Jan 2024, in Norfolk.
We live in Gloucestershire. London and the Home Counties would have been acceptable for her, had they not been booked solid.
Very good. Isn't confit de canard and/or a steak frites a staple everywhere still which takes some beating or is that one of the things done to death.
If you find a suspiciously good value confit de canard I am reliably told it will be a mix of tinned and frozen. Most often
Steak frites is reliable. I had a lovely one yesterday. But if French food is reduced to steak frites as the reliable dish that’s like Britain in about 1974
Well, to torture the French should eat breakfast three times a day quip, a "full English", which Englishmen should as you allude to eat three times a day, is after all only sausage, egg, XXX, XXX, etc*
Ukrainian forces have recaptured the village of Andriivka in the eastern Donetsk region, marking one of the most significant battlefield gains in the area since nearby Bakhmut fell under Moscow’s control in May. https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1702589462226628701
...Ukraine's 3rd Separate Assault Brigade claimed that it had "eliminated" the intelligence chief of Russia's 72nd brigade, three battalion commanders "and almost all the infantry of the 72nd brigade, together with officers and a significant amount of equipment."..
I know nothing about these things but whilst any progress is good it does seem like if this village of 74 people in the 2001 census, is a significant gain, then surely a stalemate for another year or more is very likely.
Territorial gains are a lagging indicator. They're the most visible indicator of the balance of forces, but they don't tell us what is happening in terms of the attrition of each sides combat power. So you can't extrapolate from them to say that a stalemate is likely for another year.
When the Russian army reaches a breaking point, and is no longer able to defend the full length of the current front line, then territorial gains for Ukraine will happen very suddenly.
I'm confident that Ukraine has the upper hand in terms of inflicting greater losses on Russia then they are suffering, but I can't tell you how quickly the Russian army is approaching its breaking point, and how far it is from that point.
There are definite signs of the Russian defence being under severe strain. I disagree that a stalemate is very likely for at least another year. There's a good chance of the Russian defence failing long before then. It could happen next week and we wouldn't have any particular sign that it was about to happen.
This is daft. Not even convinced it's effective politics: ...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the Mail
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him. Not clever at all.
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majority
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.
It's a European problem and can only be handled at the European level. The fact that the Tories have shat all over our relationship with the rest of Europe makes that harder than it needs to be, but Starmer should be applauded for trying.
What if a newly hard right EU decides on something like Rwanda? Do we eagerly join in with them just because it’s an EU policy, even though we decided that was too evil and immoral for the UK alone?
The Rwanda deal is for 1000 over 5 years. We had that many in 5 days last week.
It might just work as a deterrent. We don’t know until we actually TRY
If the whole EU can find some remote but safe island to send all these people to (much more likely given the size of the EU) what would you say? Would it suddenly become “acceptable”?
It is a fantasy to think that there is any country that wants to take these arrivals from us or the EU. Many of their own countries refuse them.
There are nine uninhabited islands in the Azores. Which belongs to Portugal and hence the EU. Could start there…
Are there? According to my checks there are nine islands and they're all populated.
“The 9 inhabited and 8 uninhabited islands of the Azores”
So we have apparently 8 uninhabited Azores islands... I still can't find them. This is a serious question, I don't know the Azores. Where are they? Are we talking about tiny little rocks? I've found something called Ilhéu do Monchique, which is about 50 metres long. Is that your planned destination for these refugees?
Amazingly, I haven’t actually gone into detailed plans for each individual Azore
I am pointing out that there are plenty of uninhabited places in the ambit of the EU. The French probably have dozens in quite unpleasant places - Kerguelen springs to mind
There is detail, and then there is being able to actually name a place or find it on a map rather than in a quote from a random website.....
I can certainly pinpoint Kerguelen. It’s a large archipelago in the sub Antarctic. It has about 3 scientists living there. It is grim but it is habitable (Matthew Paris spent several months there, famously)
Kerguelen would certainly be a deterrent and could house hundreds of thousands
Not sure how easy it is to build cities on a glacier in the most remote islands on earth, but assuming that is possible, that gives a solution for a couple of months worth of immigrants to the EU. Next?
Also, given the state of the Merchant Navy, how many British-registered prison ships are there to take them to Kerguelen? No airport, remember. It would be like the First Fleet and Botany Bay. Only, without the First Fleet.
For the umpteenth time, the 2019 Get Brexit Done election was atypical. An anomaly. Boris Johnson unblocked the remainer parliament's procrastination with a one-off single issue election held on a dark December day. That he reached parts no other politician has reached is testament to the powers of his persuasion (aka lying).
There is NO guarantee that those apparent missing Boris Brexit voters have any party allegiance whatsoever, nor that they will even vote next year.
If you really want to pursue missing voters go back to the last proper General Election in this country: June 2017
Have to agree. In 2019 there were two, perhaps three, big reasons to vote Tory
Get Brexit done Stop any chance of PM Corbyn happening You liked Boris
The first two are done, and the third is gone. The Conservative remainers, the Cameroons, seem to dislike the post referendum party, so they’re not coming back - they probably have more in common with Sir Keir’s Labour. The first time Tories who voted for Boris to get Brexit done were only lending their votes, & have been duped, landed with Truss then Sunak, who they’d probably never heard of.
Heathener’s bit in bold hits the nail on the head, in my opinion - I was one of those first time Tories and wouldn’t even consider voting for them next time.
Enforced returns by year from the ONS. The Tories want to portray the problem as being out there, but it's their own incompetence at governance that's a large part of what's going on.
But we didn’t legally Brexit until 2020. So that mild decline from 2016 can’t be blamed on Brexit. More likely it was a byproduct of a drop in EU citizens coming here, psychologically deterred by Brexit
Overall it looks more like a failure of governance across the board - on that I agree with you. This govt has been crap on migration; almost as bad as the one before it
That doesn't really track... the main driver in the change seems to be the non-EU enforced returns. No idea what the reasons are but I can't see how it would be due to deterred EU citizens, since it's the wrong category and the wrong mechanism.
One of the main reasons is the massive slowdown in processing applications and thus huge increase in the waiting list, paralleling the massive waits in the NHS, the courts system and everything else the Government is in charge of.
The waiting list of voters desperate to kick them out seems to be growing proportionately to the other lists too....
Add this one to the list.
Mrs PtP has just booked her driving test. Earliest she could get is 18th Jan 2024, in Norfolk.
We live in Gloucestershire. London and the Home Counties would have been acceptable for her, had they not been booked solid.
Apparently they are bought in bulk and resold like tickets for a popular event.
Enforced returns by year from the ONS. The Tories want to portray the problem as being out there, but it's their own incompetence at governance that's a large part of what's going on.
But we didn’t legally Brexit until 2020. So that mild decline from 2016 can’t be blamed on Brexit. More likely it was a byproduct of a drop in EU citizens coming here, psychologically deterred by Brexit
Overall it looks more like a failure of governance across the board - on that I agree with you. This govt has been crap on migration; almost as bad as the one before it
That doesn't really track... the main driver in the change seems to be the non-EU enforced returns. No idea what the reasons are but I can't see how it would be due to deterred EU citizens, since it's the wrong category and the wrong mechanism.
One of the main reasons is the massive slowdown in processing applications and thus huge increase in the waiting list, paralleling the massive waits in the NHS, the courts system and everything else the Government is in charge of.
The waiting list of voters desperate to kick them out seems to be growing proportionately to the other lists too....
Add this one to the list.
Mrs PtP has just booked her driving test. Earliest she could get is 18th Jan 2024, in Norfolk.
We live in Gloucestershire. London and the Home Counties would have been acceptable for her, had they not been booked solid.
You need to go to a ticket tout not the DVLA these days!
"there are more McDonalds in France, per head, than anywhere in Europe"
Is this right?
Being associated with immigrants, anti-McDonalds protests in France attract a certain element. McDonalds success is related to the usual pushing match between globalisation and attempts to keep local culture.
A chap I knew moved there, and thought that joining such a demo was about anti-megacorp stuff. He was horrified to discover that a serious proportion of the crowd were blood & soil types.
This is daft. Not even convinced it's effective politics: ...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the Mail
Yes, it's akin to his disingenuous "I hate tree-huggers" line.
For the umpteenth time, the 2019 Get Brexit Done election was atypical. An anomaly. Boris Johnson unblocked the remainer parliament's procrastination with a one-off single issue election held on a dark December day. That he reached parts no other politician has reached is testament to the powers of his persuasion (aka lying).
There is NO guarantee that those apparent missing Boris Brexit voters have any party allegiance whatsoever, nor that they will even vote next year.
If you really want to pursue missing voters go back to the last proper General Election in this country: June 2017
Have to agree. In 2019 there were two, perhaps three, big reasons to vote Tory
Get Brexit done Stop any chance of PM Corbyn happening You liked Boris
The first two are done, and the third is gone. The Conservative remainers, the Cameroons, seem to dislike the post referendum party, so they’re not coming back - they probably have more in common with Sir Keir’s Labour. The first time Tories who voted for Boris to get Brexit done were only lending their votes, & have been duped, landed with Truss then Sunak, who they’d probably never heard of.
Heathener’s bit in bold hits the nail on the head, in my opinion - I was one of those first time Tories and wouldn’t even consider voting for them next time.
I find it hard to swallow that some people actually liked Boris. Nevertheless you're quite right.
Ukrainian forces have recaptured the village of Andriivka in the eastern Donetsk region, marking one of the most significant battlefield gains in the area since nearby Bakhmut fell under Moscow’s control in May. https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1702589462226628701
...Ukraine's 3rd Separate Assault Brigade claimed that it had "eliminated" the intelligence chief of Russia's 72nd brigade, three battalion commanders "and almost all the infantry of the 72nd brigade, together with officers and a significant amount of equipment."..
I know nothing about these things but whilst any progress is good it does seem like if this village of 74 people in the 2001 census, is a significant gain, then surely a stalemate for another year or more is very likely.
Enforced returns by year from the ONS. The Tories want to portray the problem as being out there, but it's their own incompetence at governance that's a large part of what's going on.
But we didn’t legally Brexit until 2020. So that mild decline from 2016 can’t be blamed on Brexit. More likely it was a byproduct of a drop in EU citizens coming here, psychologically deterred by Brexit
Overall it looks more like a failure of governance across the board - on that I agree with you. This govt has been crap on migration; almost as bad as the one before it
That doesn't really track... the main driver in the change seems to be the non-EU enforced returns. No idea what the reasons are but I can't see how it would be due to deterred EU citizens, since it's the wrong category and the wrong mechanism.
One of the main reasons is the massive slowdown in processing applications and thus huge increase in the waiting list, paralleling the massive waits in the NHS, the courts system and everything else the Government is in charge of.
The waiting list of voters desperate to kick them out seems to be growing proportionately to the other lists too....
Add this one to the list.
Mrs PtP has just booked her driving test. Earliest she could get is 18th Jan 2024, in Norfolk.
We live in Gloucestershire. London and the Home Counties would have been acceptable for her, had they not been booked solid.
On the bright side, it will probably be snowed off.
For the umpteenth time, the 2019 Get Brexit Done election was atypical. An anomaly. Boris Johnson unblocked the remainer parliament's procrastination with a one-off single issue election held on a dark December day. That he reached parts no other politician has reached is testament to the powers of his persuasion (aka lying).
There is NO guarantee that those apparent missing Boris Brexit voters have any party allegiance whatsoever, nor that they will even vote next year.
If you really want to pursue missing voters go back to the last proper General Election in this country: June 2017
Have to agree. In 2019 there were two, perhaps three, big reasons to vote Tory
Get Brexit done Stop any chance of PM Corbyn happening You liked Boris
The first two are done, and the third is gone. The Conservative remainers, the Cameroons, seem to dislike the post referendum party, so they’re not coming back - they probably have more in common with Sir Keir’s Labour. The first time Tories who voted for Boris to get Brexit done were only lending their votes, & have been duped, landed with Truss then Sunak, who they’d probably never heard of.
Heathener’s bit in bold hits the nail on the head, in my opinion - I was one of those first time Tories and wouldn’t even consider voting for them next time.
Enforced returns by year from the ONS. The Tories want to portray the problem as being out there, but it's their own incompetence at governance that's a large part of what's going on.
But we didn’t legally Brexit until 2020. So that mild decline from 2016 can’t be blamed on Brexit. More likely it was a byproduct of a drop in EU citizens coming here, psychologically deterred by Brexit
Overall it looks more like a failure of governance across the board - on that I agree with you. This govt has been crap on migration; almost as bad as the one before it
They just blame lefty lawyers and activist judges and people lap it up when it is their own incompetence.
The polls can be flattering Labour and Labour could still win a landslide. The Labour poll leads are so large that these are not mutually exclusive.
Electoral Calculus gives a Labour majority of 92 with vote shares of 42-30.
That's not a prediction, by the way, but it does illustrate the scale of the hole that the Tories are in. Losing by only 12pp wouldn't be a terrible result for the Tories compared to polls regularly putting them 22 points behind, but they'd still lose 170 seats.
a pedant writes
grumblegrumble
itsnotalandslideifitisntthreefigures
grumblegrumble
Eh. I could have fine-tuned the result to give Labour a three figure majority with very similar vote shares, but why bother? 92 is close enough that it makes the point.
This is daft. Not even convinced it's effective politics: ...Labour also announced plans to treat criminals involved in cross-Channel people-smuggling as terrorists and labelled those who disagreed with the proposals “un-British”...
The expansion of the category of 'terrorist' to include this who are just unpleasant criminals is bad policy.
It’s almost as if they have no intention of doing it but are just hoping for a good headline in the Mail
It's the use of "un-British" to describe anyone who disagrees with him that's particularly crass.
It was offensive bullshit from the Tories, and it's equally so from him. Not clever at all.
His mishandling of the migrants issue is the first thing, in many months, that has made me question if Starmer will get an overall majority
I’ve always thought Starmer would come a cropper on the small boats (he has no plan, and will be even more spineless than the Tories). But the reckoning might come sooner than the GE
These are not good headlines for Labour
It;s the sheer stupidity of putting his trust in a benign Europe,
Germany currently is saying it wont take any more migrants and yesterday Italy got hammered with a huge number of illegals - 6000 in a day .
The UK will just end up a dumping ground since the EU cant cope.
It's a European problem and can only be handled at the European level. The fact that the Tories have shat all over our relationship with the rest of Europe makes that harder than it needs to be, but Starmer should be applauded for trying.
What if a newly hard right EU decides on something like Rwanda? Do we eagerly join in with them just because it’s an EU policy, even though we decided that was too evil and immoral for the UK alone?
The Rwanda deal is for 1000 over 5 years. We had that many in 5 days last week.
It might just work as a deterrent. We don’t know until we actually TRY
If the whole EU can find some remote but safe island to send all these people to (much more likely given the size of the EU) what would you say? Would it suddenly become “acceptable”?
It is a fantasy to think that there is any country that wants to take these arrivals from us or the EU. Many of their own countries refuse them.
There are nine uninhabited islands in the Azores. Which belongs to Portugal and hence the EU. Could start there…
Are there? According to my checks there are nine islands and they're all populated.
“The 9 inhabited and 8 uninhabited islands of the Azores”
So we have apparently 8 uninhabited Azores islands... I still can't find them. This is a serious question, I don't know the Azores. Where are they? Are we talking about tiny little rocks? I've found something called Ilhéu do Monchique, which is about 50 metres long. Is that your planned destination for these refugees?
Amazingly, I haven’t actually gone into detailed plans for each individual Azore
I am pointing out that there are plenty of uninhabited places in the ambit of the EU. The French probably have dozens in quite unpleasant places - Kerguelen springs to mind
There is detail, and then there is being able to actually name a place or find it on a map rather than in a quote from a random website.....
I can certainly pinpoint Kerguelen. It’s a large archipelago in the sub Antarctic. It has about 3 scientists living there. It is grim but it is habitable (Matthew Paris spent several months there, famously)
Kerguelen would certainly be a deterrent and could house hundreds of thousands
Not sure how easy it is to build cities on a glacier in the most remote islands on earth, but assuming that is possible, that gives a solution for a couple of months worth of immigrants to the EU. Next?
Also, given the state of the Merchant Navy, how many British-registered prison ships are there to take them to Kerguelen? No airport, remember. It would be like the First Fleet and Botany Bay. Only, without the First Fleet.
1. A lot of 2019 Tories voted for them for the first time and have either been badly let down or the purpose of the tactical vote - get Brexit done, keep Corbyn out - is expired. They won't be going back to what was never a natural home in the first place.
2. If Labour is sufficiently unthreatening - and that appears to be Starmer's central strategy - then many of the 2019 Tories are likely to just sit it out. That's exactly what happened in 1997, when the Labour vote only went up by 2m but the Tory one plummeted by 5m. With the Tory and Sunak approval ratings so low, there's every chance that Don't Know will translate to Won't Vote.
This Sean Thomas guy has missed something. There is another good French food other than the croissant - the traditional French baguette. So much better than the crap British knock-offs. I think there must be something different about the flour. French one tastes delicious but goes off in hours but the taste when fresh is just fantastic. Particularly with some Normandy salted butter and either confiture or jambon/fromage.
Du pain, du vin, du Boursin. And that's another thing? When did baguettes become baguettes and not French loaves or French sticks? Jumpers for goalposts...
Enforced returns by year from the ONS. The Tories want to portray the problem as being out there, but it's their own incompetence at governance that's a large part of what's going on.
But we didn’t legally Brexit until 2020. So that mild decline from 2016 can’t be blamed on Brexit. More likely it was a byproduct of a drop in EU citizens coming here, psychologically deterred by Brexit
Overall it looks more like a failure of governance across the board - on that I agree with you. This govt has been crap on migration; almost as bad as the one before it
That doesn't really track... the main driver in the change seems to be the non-EU enforced returns. No idea what the reasons are but I can't see how it would be due to deterred EU citizens, since it's the wrong category and the wrong mechanism.
One of the main reasons is the massive slowdown in processing applications and thus huge increase in the waiting list, paralleling the massive waits in the NHS, the courts system and everything else the Government is in charge of.
The waiting list of voters desperate to kick them out seems to be growing proportionately to the other lists too....
Add this one to the list.
Mrs PtP has just booked her driving test. Earliest she could get is 18th Jan 2024, in Norfolk.
We live in Gloucestershire. London and the Home Counties would have been acceptable for her, had they not been booked solid.
If that is Election Day I will give you a bright shiny penny.
I think Q2 2024 looks a good call for the GE. Anything later could be seen as a bit desperate.
Preceded by a voter friendly budget. Firstly an increase in the personal allowance to £15,000pa to help (nearly) everyone together with 2% reduction in employees NI to help the workers.
What about corporation tax - increased recently from 19% to 25%?
When Sunak proposed this, in his chancellor days, was this increase intended to be temporary to claw back the pandemic financial black hole? I can't recall.
I am pointing out that there are plenty of uninhabited places in the ambit of the EU. The French probably have dozens in quite unpleasant places - Kerguelen springs to mind
This is a threadbare fantasy. There is no airstrip on Kerguelen.
Do tow backs (at gunpoint) or live with the arrivals. Those are the options.
If those are the choices you have to live with the arrivals.
We cannot, in all conscience, risk fellow human beings lives by trying to tow them back.
This is why I don’t get the hate to the RNLI for helping these people at sea. What are they supposed to do. Let them drown ?
Comments
https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1702589462226628701
...Ukraine's 3rd Separate Assault Brigade claimed that it had "eliminated" the intelligence chief of Russia's 72nd brigade, three battalion commanders "and almost all the infantry of the 72nd brigade, together with officers and a significant amount of equipment."..
Electoral Calculus gives a Labour majority of 92 with vote shares of 42-30.
That's not a prediction, by the way, but it does illustrate the scale of the hole that the Tories are in. Losing by only 12pp wouldn't be a terrible result for the Tories compared to polls regularly putting them 22 points behind, but they'd still lose 170 seats.
In any case, let's say we switched your bypass scheme on today - deport them all direct to Rwanda. What do we do with all the ones we already have? Abandon their claims and deport them? To where - Rwanda can't take the numbers we would be sending.
This is the problem with the Rwanda thing - it is a dream sketched with crayons. Australia came up with a workable version of this because they are actually competent. We are not.
Are my household finances improving?
Is the general economy improving?
Are the government meeting their/my main objectives?
As well as who has the better campaign and vision for the future.
On the first three the govt will need enormous luck to get anywhere significantly helpful. It is quite possible they run a better campaign, and reduce the lead by 5% or so in the final month or two, but even that is far from given.
Still, it has made them all Trillionaires.
They do not want to register as asylum seekers, precisely because they want to work.
A big flaw in the discussions of immigrants and asylum seeking is that a mix of motives for immigration is typical. Consider
1) An Indian friend. A Christian. His church gets burned down whenever the RSS have a bad week, or need a day off from attacking Muslims. This doesn't happen every year. But he came to the UK to work. At least a part of his reason was being able to go to church without a fire extinguisher.
2) My wife. She came here from Peru, to join family, find education & work and to escape the Joy Joy Maoist terrorist situation there. What percentage of each? - *she* is hard pressed to say.
Mr. Farooq, my understanding is that Portugal is attempting to raise/create islands further west, for the legal rights these would present.
I don't want to be unkind, because you are such a fascinating poster, but it strikes me that the one engaging in rhetoric here is you not me.
Preceded by a voter friendly budget. Firstly an increase in the personal allowance to £15,000pa to help (nearly) everyone together with 2% reduction in employees NI to help the workers.
The cost of extra border force and court officials will more than be made up by the tax revenue from having people able to work for an extra couple of years and maintain and develop skills rather than becoming dependent on the state. And that is just the fiscal benefit, social integration and social acceptance would be a lot higher if asylum seekers were working and supporting themselves.
Personally I expect the majority of the uncertain Tories to sit the next election out - they can see the Government is exhausted, but actually voting for another party goes against the grain for them, so just let it happen. That was the decisive move in 1997, not a sudden revival of Tory fortunes on the day.
Yes, yes yes.
All we need is for a UK PM to join a scheme he cant control and then to be told his refusing to take whatever the commission decide is anti communautaire. Well create another crisis with Europe within months of signing up.
I wonder how the rejoin polls will look like then ?
https://news.sunwebgroup.com/the-azores-islands-a-tropical-paradise-in-europe
I understand the rationale for the latter point, but have to ask why after all these years post Brexit we are no further forward?
On refugees, there is a cold-heartedness amongst some Tories which truly is unBritish. We cannot set a zero target which despite their denials is clearly what they want - just as after Brexit the target was negative as they wanted (and achieved) the goal of making foreigners go home.
The UK - especially of we want to be "global Britain" - cannot pretend the rest of the world isn't there. We can't build walls and shut out a global problem. So any solution to refugees and migration will be global. But the right of the Tory party don't understand why these foreigners simply do as they are told.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/french-food-is-the-most-disappointing-in-the-world/
Obfuscation and angry partisan rhetoric aside, there's very little substance to anything you say. You're a guesser, a hack, aren't you?
I am pointing out that there are plenty of uninhabited places in the ambit of the EU. The French probably have dozens in quite unpleasant places - Kerguelen springs to mind
Enforced returns by year from the ONS. The Tories want to portray the problem as being out there, but it's their own incompetence at governance that's a large part of what's going on.
5 years working in France left me wondering why the french think their food is so good, I actually enjoyed Germany more.
Adding the Labour seats lost to the SNP in Scotland too
Overall it looks more like a failure of governance across the board - on that I agree with you. This govt has been crap on migration; almost as bad as the one before it
Just some basic fact checking to assess the viability. I'm starting to come to a conclusion that sending large numbers of refugees in relatively remote areas is a bad idea but I'm still open to arguments if I've missed something.
Kerguelen would certainly be a deterrent and could house hundreds of thousands
Immigration was lower under the last Labour government. It was lower under the coalition government.
This is a problem that is only going to get worse, BTW, and will change our societies massively whether we let people in or not.
(That's a statement of the obvious to most people - sorry).
Rather like the lower end French wine production, in many ways.
controls on free movement
from the new accession
nations for 7 years like
Germany in 2004 Brexit may
never have happened. The
2016 EU referendum would likely have seen a narrow
Leave win.
As it is we just now have the same points system for EU as non EU migrants. If that isn't tough enough for you then you likely vote Reform UK
grumblegrumble
itsnotalandslideifitisntthreefigures
grumblegrumble
Could even have a new settlement: Leonburgh.
I don't wholly agree with OGH on this - it's an idea he has floated consistently for months.
Redfield & Wilton have 19% of 2019 Conservative voters saying Don't Know (allowing for likelihood to vote) and 53% of Conservative 2019 voters staying loyal. Stripping out the DKs puts the latter figure up to 65% so perhaps the pollsters are to a degree anticipating the return of the 2019 Tory voters - I believe Opinium does that as part of its methodology.
If YouGov doesn't that might explain why its Conservative ratings are 3-4% below those of other pollsters such as R&W.
R&W have 15% of the 2019 Conservative vote going to Labour - that's nearly 7% of the electorate but that doesn't wholly explain the high Labour ratings. According to R&W, Labour's 2023 vote consists of 90% of its 2019 vote, 15% of the 2019 Conservative vote, 20% of the 2019 LD vote, 15% of the 2019 Green vote and 56% of those who Didn't Vote last time (presumably mainly new voters).
Expecting 2019 Conservative voters who have gone either DK or to Reform to return en masse to the Conservatives at the first whiff of electoral gunpowder isn't so far backed by any polling evidence. The likelihood is most will abstain - some will return but not in the numbers Sunak needs.
Where would that put the Conservatives in terms of seats? Any advance on a dozen?
One hesitates to disagree with Our Venerable Host, but I think he may just be calling it wrong for once.
Our resident expert on such matters is Leon who thinks the opposite!
Steak frites is reliable. I had a lovely one yesterday. But if French food is reduced to steak frites as the reliable dish that’s like Britain in about 1974
Do tow backs (at gunpoint) or live with the arrivals. Those are the options.
Is this right?
Mrs PtP has just booked her driving test. Earliest she could get is 18th Jan 2024, in Norfolk.
We live in Gloucestershire. London and the Home Counties would have been acceptable for her, had they not been booked solid.
*redacted so as not to start a flame war
When the Russian army reaches a breaking point, and is no longer able to defend the full length of the current front line, then territorial gains for Ukraine will happen very suddenly.
I'm confident that Ukraine has the upper hand in terms of inflicting greater losses on Russia then they are suffering, but I can't tell you how quickly the Russian army is approaching its breaking point, and how far it is from that point.
There are definite signs of the Russian defence being under severe strain. I disagree that a stalemate is very likely for at least another year. There's a good chance of the Russian defence failing long before then. It could happen next week and we wouldn't have any particular sign that it was about to happen.
Get Brexit done
Stop any chance of PM Corbyn happening
You liked Boris
The first two are done, and the third is gone. The Conservative remainers, the Cameroons, seem to dislike the post referendum party, so they’re not coming back - they probably have more in common with Sir Keir’s Labour. The first time Tories who voted for Boris to get Brexit done were only lending their votes, & have been duped, landed with Truss then Sunak, who they’d probably never heard of.
Heathener’s bit in bold hits the nail on the head, in my opinion - I was one of those first time Tories and wouldn’t even consider voting for them next time.
A chap I knew moved there, and thought that joining such a demo was about anti-megacorp stuff. He was horrified to discover that a serious proportion of the crowd were blood & soil types.
good to see you back
I wasn't saying that 92 itself was a landslide.
https://www.thelocal.fr/20190917/mcdonalds-celebrates-40-years-of-big-macs-in-franc
Premier League Everton have new owners after Farhad Moshiri sold his 94% stake in the club to American investment fund 777 Partners.
The takeover brings to an end the tumultuous tenure of British-Iranian Moshiri, who first invested in 2016.
The sale is expected to be completed by the end of 2023, subject to Premier League, Football Association and Financial Conduct Authority approval.
777's acquisition means half of the 20 top-flight clubs are American-owned.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/66804033
1. A lot of 2019 Tories voted for them for the first time and have either been badly let down or the purpose of the tactical vote - get Brexit done, keep Corbyn out - is expired. They won't be going back to what was never a natural home in the first place.
2. If Labour is sufficiently unthreatening - and that appears to be Starmer's central strategy - then many of the 2019 Tories are likely to just sit it out. That's exactly what happened in 1997, when the Labour vote only went up by 2m but the Tory one plummeted by 5m. With the Tory and Sunak approval ratings so low, there's every chance that Don't Know will translate to Won't Vote.
When Sunak proposed this, in his chancellor days, was this increase intended to be temporary to claw back the pandemic financial black hole? I can't recall.
They're all moving to the cities to eat at Maccie D's.
We cannot, in all conscience, risk fellow human beings lives by trying to tow them back.
This is why I don’t get the hate to the RNLI for helping these people at sea. What are they supposed to do. Let them drown ?