"Costly efforts to install the Oracle ERP financial reporting software on Birmingham council's IT systems were also blamed for the local authority's financial state.
The failed bid saw Birmingham City Council forced to spend £46.53million to fix 'urgent' issues with its IT systems in June 2023, as it estimated the total cost of overhauling the system would be in the region of £100million."
"Costly efforts to install the Oracle ERP financial reporting software on Birmingham council's IT systems were also blamed for the local authority's financial state.
The failed bid saw Birmingham City Council forced to spend £46.53million to fix 'urgent' issues with its IT systems in June 2023, as it estimated the total cost of overhauling the system would be in the region of £100million."
(Daily Mail)
WTF?
How is this possible? That is a colossal figure.
Quite easily - unlike SAP which was a case of the business fitting the system, Oracle is a vase of the system fitting the business which means a lot of configuration and testing which costs.
This isn't a blip. Look at the underlying numbers in both the Deltapoll and Ipsos polls today (helpfully summarised in the threads below). They're awful for the Tories.
At the risk of turning into @Heathener, the prospect of something close to a Tory wipe out is being underplayed.
Just because it's never happened (ignoring what happened to the Liberals) and just because they've existed for so long (so had the Liberals) doesn't mean it's never going to happen.
I’m pretty instinctively a Tory kind of guy. A Unionist through and through, proud to be British, a believer in capitalism and private enterprise, encouraging people to work hard to get on and rewarding ambition.
I really have no idea what this government is about anymore. It is high tax, low service, short sighted and, particularly anywhere near the Home Office, deeply unpleasant bordering on unBritish. I am in something approaching despair. What on earth happened to Cameron’s new Tories?
Short answer: they lost the referendum.
Long answer: Cameroonism didn't really have a good answer to the question "what are the Conservatives for?" The coalition was a bit of an "in office, not in power" experience and some sort of reaction against that was probably inevitable. I don't like the form that has taken any more than you, but I can sort of understand it. Add to that the change in the age graph; the Conservatives are a "waiting for God" party now in a way they weren't before. That has consequences.
As for the higher tax, lower services issue... I'm willing to cut Sunak some slack there, though I wish he'd be honest about it. The UK has been writing post-dated cheques for decades, and the electorate has rewarded governments for doing that. They were bound to be cashed eventually, and it's not entirely Sunak's fault that it's on his watch.
The medium answer: They lost the referendum, then didn’t stick around to honour the result.
Yes. It was essential to the Tory project in 2015/16 that Cameron, having given us the choice, remained as PM to see it through. If he had thought that a Leave result was undeliverable and was a resignation issue he should have said so in advance, as giving the people the choice was the manifesto commitment. He didn't.
That travesty was compounded by failing to appoint a genuine Brexiteer as PM in his place.
They have never recovered from those two disasters.
Not exactly Paris but big enough to have life. Especially at 7pm on a balmy weekday evening
This is one of the main roads, in the centre, right now
They’ve all taken small boats to England.
I’ve found the tourist centre. Even here…
Provincial France feels notably “recessiony” to me
Perhaps they knew you were coming?
Hello Punter
What’s all this ‘he’s a terrible tipster” stuff I saw you posting about me?
Lol! I was thinking of certain suggestions concerning how well UKIP were going to do at one or two elections in the past. I'm afraid I followed you over the cliff a couple of times, and I tend to remember that kind of thing. But I take full responsibility myself, as all punters must, and I'm sure they were not at all typical of your prowess generally, so I apologise if I maligned you unfairly.
So, in 2015, James O’Brien believed the fantasist Carl Beech, who was inventing stories of paedophile Tories, whilst pouring scorn on reports of sexual abuse by left leaning Russell Brand
Imagine how baffled he’d be pretending to look if it were anyone else being led by pure tribalism
Sure a lot of people were swept along by Brand's charisma a decade or two back, though I was always unamused. The fact they have changed their tune is a good thing. Heaven has a place etc...
It's the people who now back him knowing what we know now that worry me.
- The joyous thing is that the modern Labour Party isn't just signed up to Net Zero, they're signed up to Ulez, LTNs and 20mph, destroying our home-grown energy industry, and a host of the most unpopular and anti-working class policies that could be imagined. And they think they'll be in power longer than New Labour?
Tell that to everyone employed in offshore wind in Teesside. Embrace the future.
With all due respect to the hard-working dead bird collectors of Teeside, Wind still requires gas back up. So we still need gas, and we should get our own gas out, for both financial and environmental reasons.
I am in favour of renewable energy btw, but I prefer reliable sources like tidal.
Wind only needs gas backup today as its not scaled up yet.
Wind + batteries in the future won't.
And the best batteries of all? Cars.
Wind powered cars are the future. And wind is a lot cheaper than petrol.
It's been explained here that wind, especially offshore, isn't economical and never will be. It's permanently expensive power. Recent auctions offering a strike price of over twice the usual rate of gas (afaicr) failed due to lack of interest. I support the effort to even out wind supply by upgrading the grid, incentivising storage etc., because we have so much of it, and we need to make the best of it. But I'm sorry to say I think it's totally the wrong renewable for the UK, and has become a feeding frenzy for subsidy sponging overseas firms.
Really?
Yes, really.
No, not really.
Your source used dodgy data equating old contracts as the supposed price for new ones which is false.
As bondegezou, I and many others have said to you, the price has fallen considerably so using old contracts (which are no longer available for new developments) as the new price is just a lie.
I'm shocked! Shocked to find that dodgy data are being posted here ...
There is no dodgy data. Barty is annoyed that I was using the real average price of wind rather than the 'future' average price of it.
That is dodgy. 🤦♂️
The past contracts of wind aren't being resigned, or offered. They were there to kickstart the industry.
The 'past' price of already signed future prices are already lower than gas.
Thank you, Cyclefree. I've been putting this view forward for a while now with very little appreciation of my perspicacity.
I'm not saying it's going to happen. It probably won't. But it is as likely as NOM, with Starmer in No.10 by virtue of a coalition. The latter seems to be a perfectly respectable opinion around here, whereas the equally likely Tory wipeout is poo-poohed.
I don't particularly want to see it myself. I have this quaint notion that good government requires a good opposition, but FPTP is a fickle system which doesn't often deliver what you want. It doesn't need much to go wrong for Sunak and Co for the current projection of about 150 seats to become more like 15.
Don't say I didn't warn you guys.
There is a decent argument to be made that good opposition requires the current 'Tories" to be wiped out so that Conservative and Unionist candidates can emerge next time.
This isn't a blip. Look at the underlying numbers in both the Deltapoll and Ipsos polls today (helpfully summarised in the threads below). They're awful for the Tories.
At the risk of turning into @Heathener, the prospect of something close to a Tory wipe out is being underplayed.
Just because it's never happened (ignoring what happened to the Liberals) and just because they've existed for so long (so had the Liberals) doesn't mean it's never going to happen.
I’m pretty instinctively a Tory kind of guy. A Unionist through and through, proud to be British, a believer in capitalism and private enterprise, encouraging people to work hard to get on and rewarding ambition.
I really have no idea what this government is about anymore. It is high tax, low service, short sighted and, particularly anywhere near the Home Office, deeply unpleasant bordering on unBritish. I am in something approaching despair. What on earth happened to Cameron’s new Tories?
Short answer: they lost the referendum.
Long answer: Cameroonism didn't really have a good answer to the question "what are the Conservatives for?" The coalition was a bit of an "in office, not in power" experience and some sort of reaction against that was probably inevitable. I don't like the form that has taken any more than you, but I can sort of understand it. Add to that the change in the age graph; the Conservatives are a "waiting for God" party now in a way they weren't before. That has consequences.
As for the higher tax, lower services issue... I'm willing to cut Sunak some slack there, though I wish he'd be honest about it. The UK has been writing post-dated cheques for decades, and the electorate has rewarded governments for doing that. They were bound to be cashed eventually, and it's not entirely Sunak's fault that it's on his watch.
I agree we have been living in and voting for a Ponzi scheme all my adult life and that is getting harder. The huge capital surplus we had has been spent, the trade deficit is becoming structural in that so many assets have been sold to fund it and North Sea oil is pretty much depleted. I worry for my children.
Pretty much the same worldwide. This is the century of peak population, and a rapidly greying one (Africa and MENA excepted).
I am also generally a moderate but I do think firing squads are a reasonable option for dealing with the management of train companies which cannot provide an internet service on a train in 2023. Nothing else has worked.
Actually you are fortunate. Many services not only don't provide the internet, they don't provide a train either.
This isn't a blip. Look at the underlying numbers in both the Deltapoll and Ipsos polls today (helpfully summarised in the threads below). They're awful for the Tories.
At the risk of turning into @Heathener, the prospect of something close to a Tory wipe out is being underplayed.
Just because it's never happened (ignoring what happened to the Liberals) and just because they've existed for so long (so had the Liberals) doesn't mean it's never going to happen.
Thank you, Cyclefree. I've been putting this view forward for a while now with very little appreciation of my perspicacity.
I'm not saying it's going to happen. It probably won't. But it is as likely as NOM, with Starmer in No.10 by virtue of a coalition. The latter seems to be a perfectly respectable opinion around here, whereas the equally likely Tory wipeout is poo-poohed.
I don't particularly want to see it myself. I have this quaint notion that good government requires a good opposition, but FPTP is a fickle system which doesn't often deliver what you want. It doesn't need much to go wrong for Sunak and Co for the current projection of about 150 seats to become more like 15.
Don't say I didn't warn you guys.
While Deltapoll and Ipsos are just horrible for the Conservatives, the fact remains there is a core of just over 20% of the electorate who will vote Conservative no matter what - sometimes that's cultural or traditional or just an irrational fear of anything "Labour".
The other truth is the Conservative Party has survived for so long because it has the ability to re-invent itself to fit the spirit of the time. The past is ruthlessly jettisoned to create a present and a future which amounts to electability - that happens sooner or later.
That process starts when the Party recognises the mistakes it made last time in office either via a public mea culpa or privately by recognising self-indulgence in opposition keeps you in opposition and the way back to power starts by recognising the world has moved on.
Not exactly Paris but big enough to have life. Especially at 7pm on a balmy weekday evening
This is one of the main roads, in the centre, right now
They’ve all taken small boats to England.
I’ve found the tourist centre. Even here…
Provincial France feels notably “recessiony” to me
Perhaps they knew you were coming?
Hello Punter
What’s all this ‘he’s a terrible tipster” stuff I saw you posting about me?
Lol! I was thinking of certain suggestions concerning how well UKIP were going to do at one or two elections in the past. I'm afraid I followed you over the cliff a couple of times, and I tend to remember that kind of thing. But I take full responsibility myself, as all punters must, and I'm sure they were not at all typical of your prowess generally, so I apologise if I maligned you unfairly.
Good to see you back anyway.
I think any punter who knows his stuff would regard backing UKIP to get more than 10%,& to outpoll the Lib Dem’s in the 2015 GE, years before the election, taking money off half the site in the process to be a bit unlucky to back them in several constituencies only for them to poll 13% and only get one seat
Thurrock was the big bet at 16/1, it was 4/5 on election day and they lost by 300 votes. I wouldn’t want to be laying bets like that too often.
Elon Musk has indicated that X, formerly known as Twitter, is considering charging all users for accessing the platform.
The X owner said erecting a paywall around the business would ward off the bots, or automated accounts, that have become a bugbear for Musk.
Speaking in a meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, the Tesla CEO and world’s richest person suggested that X was going to charge its user base. Currently, Twitter only charges users for its subscription service X Premium, which offers perks such as a verified account checkmark and costs $11 a month in the US for iPhones and £11 in the UK.
“We’re moving to having a small monthly payment for use of the system,” Musk said.
This isn't a blip. Look at the underlying numbers in both the Deltapoll and Ipsos polls today (helpfully summarised in the threads below). They're awful for the Tories.
At the risk of turning into @Heathener, the prospect of something close to a Tory wipe out is being underplayed.
Just because it's never happened (ignoring what happened to the Liberals) and just because they've existed for so long (so had the Liberals) doesn't mean it's never going to happen.
I’m pretty instinctively a Tory kind of guy. A Unionist through and through, proud to be British, a believer in capitalism and private enterprise, encouraging people to work hard to get on and rewarding ambition.
I really have no idea what this government is about anymore. It is high tax, low service, short sighted and, particularly anywhere near the Home Office, deeply unpleasant bordering on unBritish. I am in something approaching despair. What on earth happened to Cameron’s new Tories?
Short answer: they lost the referendum.
Long answer: Cameroonism didn't really have a good answer to the question "what are the Conservatives for?" The coalition was a bit of an "in office, not in power" experience and some sort of reaction against that was probably inevitable. I don't like the form that has taken any more than you, but I can sort of understand it. Add to that the change in the age graph; the Conservatives are a "waiting for God" party now in a way they weren't before. That has consequences.
As for the higher tax, lower services issue... I'm willing to cut Sunak some slack there, though I wish he'd be honest about it. The UK has been writing post-dated cheques for decades, and the electorate has rewarded governments for doing that. They were bound to be cashed eventually, and it's not entirely Sunak's fault that it's on his watch.
The medium answer: They lost the referendum, then didn’t stick around to honour the result.
Yes. It was essential to the Tory project in 2015/16 that Cameron, having given us the choice, remained as PM to see it through. If he had thought that a Leave result was undeliverable and was a resignation issue he should have said so in advance, as giving the people the choice was the manifesto commitment. He didn't.
That travesty was compounded by failing to appoint a genuine Brexiteer as PM in his place.
They have never recovered from those two disasters.
Maybe the French have finally realised their food is unutterable shit and they are all at home learning to make new British cuisine and Singapore laksa
This isn't a blip. Look at the underlying numbers in both the Deltapoll and Ipsos polls today (helpfully summarised in the threads below). They're awful for the Tories.
At the risk of turning into @Heathener, the prospect of something close to a Tory wipe out is being underplayed.
Just because it's never happened (ignoring what happened to the Liberals) and just because they've existed for so long (so had the Liberals) doesn't mean it's never going to happen.
Thank you, Cyclefree. I've been putting this view forward for a while now with very little appreciation of my perspicacity.
I'm not saying it's going to happen. It probably won't. But it is as likely as NOM, with Starmer in No.10 by virtue of a coalition. The latter seems to be a perfectly respectable opinion around here, whereas the equally likely Tory wipeout is poo-poohed.
I don't particularly want to see it myself. I have this quaint notion that good government requires a good opposition, but FPTP is a fickle system which doesn't often deliver what you want. It doesn't need much to go wrong for Sunak and Co for the current projection of about 150 seats to become more like 15.
Don't say I didn't warn you guys.
While Deltapoll and Ipsos are just horrible for the Conservatives, the fact remains there is a core of just over 20% of the electorate who will vote Conservative no matter what - sometimes that's cultural or traditional or just an irrational fear of anything "Labour".
The other truth is the Conservative Party has survived for so long because it has the ability to re-invent itself to fit the spirit of the time. The past is ruthlessly jettisoned to create a present and a future which amounts to electability - that happens sooner or later.
That process starts when the Party recognises the mistakes it made last time in office either via a public mea culpa or privately by recognising self-indulgence in opposition keeps you in opposition and the way back to power starts by recognising the world has moved on.
The Tories got 9% in the 2019 Euro elections. An odd election, but maybe an indication that 20% isn’t their floor.
This isn't a blip. Look at the underlying numbers in both the Deltapoll and Ipsos polls today (helpfully summarised in the threads below). They're awful for the Tories.
At the risk of turning into @Heathener, the prospect of something close to a Tory wipe out is being underplayed.
Just because it's never happened (ignoring what happened to the Liberals) and just because they've existed for so long (so had the Liberals) doesn't mean it's never going to happen.
I’m pretty instinctively a Tory kind of guy. A Unionist through and through, proud to be British, a believer in capitalism and private enterprise, encouraging people to work hard to get on and rewarding ambition.
I really have no idea what this government is about anymore. It is high tax, low service, short sighted and, particularly anywhere near the Home Office, deeply unpleasant bordering on unBritish. I am in something approaching despair. What on earth happened to Cameron’s new Tories?
Exactly right. If you want to make a case for wipe-out, it is in this area. I have voted Tory in GEs for nearly 50 years, and while I keep an open mind I think the chance of doing so this time is very close to Zero. Not least because the Tories need to lose bigly and be in opposition to get rid of all their worst people, decide what they actually believe, what are their core non negotiable principles and attract stellar talent again.
Labour are, for all their faults, far closer to One Nation Toryism than the current Tories. Not so much as to policies - policy is hard at the moment - but they (this is amazing, and a very quick turnaround) give to me a greater sense of loving their country than the Tories do.
Which is exactly the pitch that Starmer is making. And exactly why the Ourselves Alone wing of the Labour Party are hating on Starmer.
- The joyous thing is that the modern Labour Party isn't just signed up to Net Zero, they're signed up to Ulez, LTNs and 20mph, destroying our home-grown energy industry, and a host of the most unpopular and anti-working class policies that could be imagined. And they think they'll be in power longer than New Labour?
Tell that to everyone employed in offshore wind in Teesside. Embrace the future.
With all due respect to the hard-working dead bird collectors of Teeside, Wind still requires gas back up. So we still need gas, and we should get our own gas out, for both financial and environmental reasons.
I am in favour of renewable energy btw, but I prefer reliable sources like tidal.
Wind only needs gas backup today as its not scaled up yet.
Wind + batteries in the future won't.
And the best batteries of all? Cars.
Wind powered cars are the future. And wind is a lot cheaper than petrol.
It's been explained here that wind, especially offshore, isn't economical and never will be. It's permanently expensive power. Recent auctions offering a strike price of over twice the usual rate of gas (afaicr) failed due to lack of interest. I support the effort to even out wind supply by upgrading the grid, incentivising storage etc., because we have so much of it, and we need to make the best of it. But I'm sorry to say I think it's totally the wrong renewable for the UK, and has become a feeding frenzy for subsidy sponging overseas firms.
Really?
Yes, really.
No, not really.
Your source used dodgy data equating old contracts as the supposed price for new ones which is false.
As bondegezou, I and many others have said to you, the price has fallen considerably so using old contracts (which are no longer available for new developments) as the new price is just a lie.
Those would be the new contracts which aren't attracting any bidders because there's not enough subsidy?
New contracts have been signed for a few years now without subsidy.
There were no signatures this time, but given the turmoil in the market that's not that unusual.
Many systems operate with auctions with no bidders from time to time. That's why you have reserves, so if you don't get what you want it gets passed in and can be reauctioned again later on.
The very few unsubsidised wind farms in the UK exist by virtue of the fact that companies like Amazon and Tesco are have power purchase agreements with them.
"The commercial companies, who buy the electricity, almost certainly do so to comply with recently introduced pressure via the Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting framework, which is embedded in the Companies Act and thus backed by criminal sanctions, to demonstrate their commitment to carbon reduction and to renewable energy."
- those costs will simply be passed to Amazon and Tesco customers at check out, so are a subsidy by any other name.
Furthermore, they are paid for generating power whether or not they are constrained (switching off deliberately to avoid grid overload), and on the other side of the grid bottleneck, gas producers must fire up to make up the shortfall, which they do, at premium prices, passing the cost on to the energy consumer, so again, subsidy of wind, but masked as high gas prices.
There are no genuinely subsidy-free wind farms in the UK.
Seems you're going down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theory websites with Orwellian names.
Ofgem pays to ensure that the energy grid is stable and reliable, and that it doesn't get damaged by too much or too little supply or demand. That makes perfect sense contrary to your BS website's claims.
In case you missed it, Ofgem also makes similar payments to carbon based power plants. £395 million was paid out last year to coal power plants which weren't operating.
Ofgem needs to invest in boosting capacity, which it is doing. Once everyone is powering their cars based on variable supply the supply will have somewhere to go, but the capacity isn't there yet.
So, in 2015, James O’Brien believed the fantasist Carl Beech, who was inventing stories of paedophile Tories, whilst pouring scorn on reports of sexual abuse by left leaning Russell Brand
Imagine how baffled he’d be pretending to look if it were anyone else being led by pure tribalism
Sure a lot of people were swept along by Brand's charisma a decade or two back, though I was always unamused. The fact they have changed their tune is a good thing. Heaven has a place etc...
It's the people who now back him knowing what we know now that worry me.
I thought one of the arguments in favour of condemning Brand is that it was an open secret to anyone in the know what he was like. In which case, it’s a question of who knew what and when. A lot of people are guilty of not speaking out.
This isn't a blip. Look at the underlying numbers in both the Deltapoll and Ipsos polls today (helpfully summarised in the threads below). They're awful for the Tories.
At the risk of turning into @Heathener, the prospect of something close to a Tory wipe out is being underplayed.
Just because it's never happened (ignoring what happened to the Liberals) and just because they've existed for so long (so had the Liberals) doesn't mean it's never going to happen.
I agree that one shouldn't entirely rule it out.
The big factor making it pretty unlikely in my view, though, is that there is no sign of the party splitting, nor of an alternative occupant of their political lane making real progress (Farage sometimes makes a noise and is an irritant to the Tories but doesn't really look to be mobilising in a serious way to win seats and grab a very large vote).
The Liberals had both of these in 1918 - a major party split between Lloyd-George's Coalition Liberals and Asquith's continuing Liberals, plus a serious and growing Labour Party in their broadly progressive lane.
Whether it could get worse for the Tories after defeat with those elements coming in - possibly, and you're right we shouldn't assume they will always be there. But it feels unlikely to be a pre-2025 thing due to lack of a split and of a strong emerging contender in their lane.
And just as you start to despair of Labour having any ambition at all they confirm they'll build the whole of HS2 and NPR (though I'll believe it when I see it).
I know "out of touch" is a cliche but the government really are coming across as very 1996/7 at the moment. Tired and out of ideas.
Their big opportunity in the near term is a poor Labour showing at the byelections. If the SNP keep Rutherglen and Tories retain Tamworth (quite possible) and Mid Beds (also quite possible) then we'll get a couple of weeks of Starmer in crisis to reset the media narrative. If Labour win 2 or 3 of those then it'll just pile on the pain. If Labour win Rutherglen and Tamworth and Lib Dems get Mid Beds with Labour second then the Tories will go into meltdown.
So that we know what to look out for - in what ways would the Tories in meltdown look different from what we are seeing now?
That's the brilliant psychological experiment that the mice are currently running.
Sunak looks like a loser. Different methodologies make it hard to compare, but he's doing about as badly as Major in '96. And he doesn't have the residual kudos for being an election winner in his own right. And Britain is not, as the slogan went, Booming, or showing any signs of preparing to boom.
Standard Operating Procedure here is change leader and hope. But for the reasons listed by @david_herdson upthread, that's not really an option. So all they can do is hang on and hope.
They clearly want to melt down, but they aren't allowed to. The sort of torture some people pay good money for. Apparently.
Meltdown to me means another 1922 committee palaver with the entire parliamentary party stabbing each other in the back. One thing they've sort of managed in the last year is a modicum of unity.
I think the final attempted regicide before the election is there, in the background. It may not happen or it may. A bit like the Prigozhin mutiny (and like that one, I think Sunak would see off the mutineers). Some of the early signs are there.
When it becomes clear that keeping him is more costly electorally than offing him, he'll go. His personal polling falling beneath that of the party would be a sign.
The trouble is there is no king or queen across the water. No Boris.
This is right. It isn't enough for Tory MPs to conclude that Sunak is a liability in that he slips to being less popular than his party (which isn't the case at the moment anyway on most polls).
They also need to think that the act of defenestration wouldn't in itself hurt them still further, and that the new leader they end up with would be better. The new leader has to be an MP, ruling out at least one person of note. Any vaguely capable contender would far rather be the shiny new Leader of the Opposition after an election than the hapless mug who got a shellacking after a handful of months at the helm so will be really hard to persuade to step up rather than wait a short time. That just leaves the howling mad and the terminally sh1t, who aren't an obvious improvement to say the least.
I just can't see it.
The only one is Penny. I'm a fan of the person, but not necessarily the policy agenda of Penny, but she's always been fairly cagey about that anyway.
I think Penny is the only one that Charles would have as PM without making an awful constitutional fuss. I can't see him happily installing Steve Barclay as PM, he'd demand a GE. Penny's sword carrying means he'd probably go with her as caretaker PM. I'd like Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda. I don't think the latter is guaranteed, possibly not even likely, but the very presence of a new leader would mean a shift in policy was demanded. Nobody wants a new leader to do a 'better' version of Sunakism.
Firstly, King Charles' views have absolutely nothing to do with it. He might or might not express a view in private audience with the new PM as to whether an election should be called promptly, but his constitutional duty is simply to appoint as PM whoever, due to being elected leader by the majority party, is the person able to command a majority in the House of Commons. If you think he'd do anything else, you're living in a fantasy world.
Secondly, Mordaunt is very unlikely to have any interest in being the sap who gets to be caretaker for a few months before a shellacking. I'm not 100% certain on this one as she sometimes makes eccentric moves (taking her bid against Sunak to the wire in leadership contest 2 for instance) but very unlikely.
Finally, "Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda" is just your own, personal fantasy and best left for you to enjoy in your private time.
I made quite clear that that was what I wanted rather than what I expected, not sure why the attempted 'zinger' was necessary.
I think Charles is more than capable of throwing a constitutional strop that derails a leadership takeover. He lacks QEII's propriety in that regard imo.
This isn't a blip. Look at the underlying numbers in both the Deltapoll and Ipsos polls today (helpfully summarised in the threads below). They're awful for the Tories.
At the risk of turning into @Heathener, the prospect of something close to a Tory wipe out is being underplayed.
Just because it's never happened (ignoring what happened to the Liberals) and just because they've existed for so long (so had the Liberals) doesn't mean it's never going to happen.
I agree that one shouldn't entirely rule it out.
The big factor making it pretty unlikely in my view, though, is that there is no sign of the party splitting, nor of an alternative occupant of their political lane making real progress (Farage sometimes makes a noise and is an irritant to the Tories but doesn't really look to be mobilising in a serious way to win seats and grab a very large vote).
The Liberals had both of these in 1918 - a major party split between Lloyd-George's Coalition Liberals and Asquith's continuing Liberals, plus a serious and growing Labour Party in their broadly progressive lane.
Whether it could get worse for the Tories after defeat with those elements coming in - possibly, and you're right we shouldn't assume they will always be there. But it feels unlikely to be a pre-2025 thing due to lack of a split and of a strong emerging contender in their lane.
I agree that a rival party on the right would be significant. There is still time for Farage to return to Reform UK. Conservatives and Reform UK both on 16% would make for an interesting election result under FPTP.
And just as you start to despair of Labour having any ambition at all they confirm they'll build the whole of HS2 and NPR (though I'll believe it when I see it).
I know "out of touch" is a cliche but the government really are coming across as very 1996/7 at the moment. Tired and out of ideas.
Their big opportunity in the near term is a poor Labour showing at the byelections. If the SNP keep Rutherglen and Tories retain Tamworth (quite possible) and Mid Beds (also quite possible) then we'll get a couple of weeks of Starmer in crisis to reset the media narrative. If Labour win 2 or 3 of those then it'll just pile on the pain. If Labour win Rutherglen and Tamworth and Lib Dems get Mid Beds with Labour second then the Tories will go into meltdown.
So that we know what to look out for - in what ways would the Tories in meltdown look different from what we are seeing now?
That's the brilliant psychological experiment that the mice are currently running.
Sunak looks like a loser. Different methodologies make it hard to compare, but he's doing about as badly as Major in '96. And he doesn't have the residual kudos for being an election winner in his own right. And Britain is not, as the slogan went, Booming, or showing any signs of preparing to boom.
Standard Operating Procedure here is change leader and hope. But for the reasons listed by @david_herdson upthread, that's not really an option. So all they can do is hang on and hope.
They clearly want to melt down, but they aren't allowed to. The sort of torture some people pay good money for. Apparently.
Meltdown to me means another 1922 committee palaver with the entire parliamentary party stabbing each other in the back. One thing they've sort of managed in the last year is a modicum of unity.
I think the final attempted regicide before the election is there, in the background. It may not happen or it may. A bit like the Prigozhin mutiny (and like that one, I think Sunak would see off the mutineers). Some of the early signs are there.
When it becomes clear that keeping him is more costly electorally than offing him, he'll go. His personal polling falling beneath that of the party would be a sign.
The trouble is there is no king or queen across the water. No Boris.
This is right. It isn't enough for Tory MPs to conclude that Sunak is a liability in that he slips to being less popular than his party (which isn't the case at the moment anyway on most polls).
They also need to think that the act of defenestration wouldn't in itself hurt them still further, and that the new leader they end up with would be better. The new leader has to be an MP, ruling out at least one person of note. Any vaguely capable contender would far rather be the shiny new Leader of the Opposition after an election than the hapless mug who got a shellacking after a handful of months at the helm so will be really hard to persuade to step up rather than wait a short time. That just leaves the howling mad and the terminally sh1t, who aren't an obvious improvement to say the least.
I just can't see it.
The only one is Penny. I'm a fan of the person, but not necessarily the policy agenda of Penny, but she's always been fairly cagey about that anyway.
I think Penny is the only one that Charles would have as PM without making an awful constitutional fuss. I can't see him happily installing Steve Barclay as PM, he'd demand a GE. Penny's sword carrying means he'd probably go with her as caretaker PM. I'd like Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda. I don't think the latter is guaranteed, possibly not even likely, but the very presence of a new leader would mean a shift in policy was demanded. Nobody wants a new leader to do a 'better' version of Sunakism.
Firstly, King Charles' views have absolutely nothing to do with it. He might or might not express a view in private audience with the new PM as to whether an election should be called promptly, but his constitutional duty is simply to appoint as PM whoever, due to being elected leader by the majority party, is the person able to command a majority in the House of Commons. If you think he'd do anything else, you're living in a fantasy world.
Secondly, Mordaunt is very unlikely to have any interest in being the sap who gets to be caretaker for a few months before a shellacking. I'm not 100% certain on this one as she sometimes makes eccentric moves (taking her bid against Sunak to the wire in leadership contest 2 for instance) but very unlikely.
Finally, "Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda" is just your own, personal fantasy and best left for you to enjoy in your private time.
I made quite clear that that was what I wanted rather than what I expected, not sure why the attempted 'zinger' was necessary.
I think Charles is more than capable of throwing a constitutional strop that derails a leadership takeover. He lacks QEII's propriety in that regard imo.
The King would appoint as PM whoever the majority party elects as PM, unless many of the governing party say they would not support the new PM's government, in which case he would request a vote of confidence in it first.
We are at the point now none of the major Tory leadership contenders, Braverman, Badenoch, Mordaunt, Barclay, Tugendhat etc have much interest in taking over now. They will let Sunak and Hunt lose the next election and then put their stalls forward to be Leader of the Opposition
This isn't a blip. Look at the underlying numbers in both the Deltapoll and Ipsos polls today (helpfully summarised in the threads below). They're awful for the Tories.
At the risk of turning into @Heathener, the prospect of something close to a Tory wipe out is being underplayed.
Just because it's never happened (ignoring what happened to the Liberals) and just because they've existed for so long (so had the Liberals) doesn't mean it's never going to happen.
I’m pretty instinctively a Tory kind of guy. A Unionist through and through, proud to be British, a believer in capitalism and private enterprise, encouraging people to work hard to get on and rewarding ambition.
I really have no idea what this government is about anymore. It is high tax, low service, short sighted and, particularly anywhere near the Home Office, deeply unpleasant bordering on unBritish. I am in something approaching despair. What on earth happened to Cameron’s new Tories?
Exactly right. If you want to make a case for wipe-out, it is in this area. I have voted Tory in GEs for nearly 50 years, and while I keep an open mind I think the chance of doing so this time is very close to Zero. Not least because the Tories need to lose bigly and be in opposition to get rid of all their worst people, decide what they actually believe, what are their core non negotiable principles and attract stellar talent again.
Labour are, for all their faults, far closer to One Nation Toryism than the current Tories. Not so much as to policies - policy is hard at the moment - but they (this is amazing, and a very quick turnaround) give to me a greater sense of loving their country than the Tories do.
Which is exactly the pitch that Starmer is making. And exactly why the Ourselves Alone wing of the Labour Party are hating on Starmer.
Bagehot gets Sir K spot on this week: his tenure is "a performance of breathtaking political cynicism....the result is that moderates now run Labour".
He compares this with Rory Stewart who is correct in every respect but completely failed to do the necessary low and cunning centrist politics.
So, in 2015, James O’Brien believed the fantasist Carl Beech, who was inventing stories of paedophile Tories, whilst pouring scorn on reports of sexual abuse by left leaning Russell Brand
Imagine how baffled he’d be pretending to look if it were anyone else being led by pure tribalism
Sure a lot of people were swept along by Brand's charisma a decade or two back, though I was always unamused. The fact they have changed their tune is a good thing. Heaven has a place etc...
It's the people who now back him knowing what we know now that worry me.
I thought one of the arguments in favour of condemning Brand is that it was an open secret to anyone in the know what he was like. In which case, it’s a question of who knew what and when. A lot of people are guilty of not speaking out.
O’Brien was too busy believing Carl Beech to be bothered considering one of his favourites could be flawed
This isn't a blip. Look at the underlying numbers in both the Deltapoll and Ipsos polls today (helpfully summarised in the threads below). They're awful for the Tories.
At the risk of turning into @Heathener, the prospect of something close to a Tory wipe out is being underplayed.
Just because it's never happened (ignoring what happened to the Liberals) and just because they've existed for so long (so had the Liberals) doesn't mean it's never going to happen.
I agree that one shouldn't entirely rule it out.
The big factor making it pretty unlikely in my view, though, is that there is no sign of the party splitting, nor of an alternative occupant of their political lane making real progress (Farage sometimes makes a noise and is an irritant to the Tories but doesn't really look to be mobilising in a serious way to win seats and grab a very large vote).
The Liberals had both of these in 1918 - a major party split between Lloyd-George's Coalition Liberals and Asquith's continuing Liberals, plus a serious and growing Labour Party in their broadly progressive lane.
Whether it could get worse for the Tories after defeat with those elements coming in - possibly, and you're right we shouldn't assume they will always be there. But it feels unlikely to be a pre-2025 thing due to lack of a split and of a strong emerging contender in their lane.
It was Labour overtaking the Liberals as the main party of the left by 1922 after universal suffrage in 1918 which was the main reason for the collapse of the Liberals as the main non Tory Party.
It would equally take RefUK overtaking the Tories as the main party of the right for the Tories to be near wiped out. That was a possibility in May and June 2019 when the Brexit Party had overtaken the Tories in some polls after May failed to get Brexit done, it is not likely now
So, in 2015, James O’Brien believed the fantasist Carl Beech, who was inventing stories of paedophile Tories, whilst pouring scorn on reports of sexual abuse by left leaning Russell Brand
Imagine how baffled he’d be pretending to look if it were anyone else being led by pure tribalism
Sure a lot of people were swept along by Brand's charisma a decade or two back, though I was always unamused. The fact they have changed their tune is a good thing. Heaven has a place etc...
It's the people who now back him knowing what we know now that worry me.
I thought one of the arguments in favour of condemning Brand is that it was an open secret to anyone in the know what he was like. In which case, it’s a question of who knew what and when. A lot of people are guilty of not speaking out.
O’Brien was too busy believing Carl Beech to be bothered considering one of his favourites could be flawed
And just as you start to despair of Labour having any ambition at all they confirm they'll build the whole of HS2 and NPR (though I'll believe it when I see it).
I know "out of touch" is a cliche but the government really are coming across as very 1996/7 at the moment. Tired and out of ideas.
Their big opportunity in the near term is a poor Labour showing at the byelections. If the SNP keep Rutherglen and Tories retain Tamworth (quite possible) and Mid Beds (also quite possible) then we'll get a couple of weeks of Starmer in crisis to reset the media narrative. If Labour win 2 or 3 of those then it'll just pile on the pain. If Labour win Rutherglen and Tamworth and Lib Dems get Mid Beds with Labour second then the Tories will go into meltdown.
So that we know what to look out for - in what ways would the Tories in meltdown look different from what we are seeing now?
That's the brilliant psychological experiment that the mice are currently running.
Sunak looks like a loser. Different methodologies make it hard to compare, but he's doing about as badly as Major in '96. And he doesn't have the residual kudos for being an election winner in his own right. And Britain is not, as the slogan went, Booming, or showing any signs of preparing to boom.
Standard Operating Procedure here is change leader and hope. But for the reasons listed by @david_herdson upthread, that's not really an option. So all they can do is hang on and hope.
They clearly want to melt down, but they aren't allowed to. The sort of torture some people pay good money for. Apparently.
Meltdown to me means another 1922 committee palaver with the entire parliamentary party stabbing each other in the back. One thing they've sort of managed in the last year is a modicum of unity.
I think the final attempted regicide before the election is there, in the background. It may not happen or it may. A bit like the Prigozhin mutiny (and like that one, I think Sunak would see off the mutineers). Some of the early signs are there.
When it becomes clear that keeping him is more costly electorally than offing him, he'll go. His personal polling falling beneath that of the party would be a sign.
The trouble is there is no king or queen across the water. No Boris.
This is right. It isn't enough for Tory MPs to conclude that Sunak is a liability in that he slips to being less popular than his party (which isn't the case at the moment anyway on most polls).
They also need to think that the act of defenestration wouldn't in itself hurt them still further, and that the new leader they end up with would be better. The new leader has to be an MP, ruling out at least one person of note. Any vaguely capable contender would far rather be the shiny new Leader of the Opposition after an election than the hapless mug who got a shellacking after a handful of months at the helm so will be really hard to persuade to step up rather than wait a short time. That just leaves the howling mad and the terminally sh1t, who aren't an obvious improvement to say the least.
I just can't see it.
The only one is Penny. I'm a fan of the person, but not necessarily the policy agenda of Penny, but she's always been fairly cagey about that anyway.
I think Penny is the only one that Charles would have as PM without making an awful constitutional fuss. I can't see him happily installing Steve Barclay as PM, he'd demand a GE. Penny's sword carrying means he'd probably go with her as caretaker PM. I'd like Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda. I don't think the latter is guaranteed, possibly not even likely, but the very presence of a new leader would mean a shift in policy was demanded. Nobody wants a new leader to do a 'better' version of Sunakism.
Firstly, King Charles' views have absolutely nothing to do with it. He might or might not express a view in private audience with the new PM as to whether an election should be called promptly, but his constitutional duty is simply to appoint as PM whoever, due to being elected leader by the majority party, is the person able to command a majority in the House of Commons. If you think he'd do anything else, you're living in a fantasy world.
Secondly, Mordaunt is very unlikely to have any interest in being the sap who gets to be caretaker for a few months before a shellacking. I'm not 100% certain on this one as she sometimes makes eccentric moves (taking her bid against Sunak to the wire in leadership contest 2 for instance) but very unlikely.
Finally, "Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda" is just your own, personal fantasy and best left for you to enjoy in your private time.
I made quite clear that that was what I wanted rather than what I expected, not sure why the attempted 'zinger' was necessary.
I think Charles is more than capable of throwing a constitutional strop that derails a leadership takeover. He lacks QEII's propriety in that regard imo.
One of many greatnesses of our late queen is that we have no idea what she did to change the course of events, put spanners in the works and what strops she threw if needed.
More than anyone else I can think of in public life she knew how to stay silent about what she did. Maybe our great grandchildren will be able to read all about it when the Peter Hennesseys of 2100 write it up from the sources.
She has a point. Is it right to deprive someone of their entire livelihood on the basis of hearsay and anonymous allegations - made to the media not the police?
I suppose you could argue that Brand has the money to fight libel actions but it still doesn’t seem quite right
And just as you start to despair of Labour having any ambition at all they confirm they'll build the whole of HS2 and NPR (though I'll believe it when I see it).
I know "out of touch" is a cliche but the government really are coming across as very 1996/7 at the moment. Tired and out of ideas.
Their big opportunity in the near term is a poor Labour showing at the byelections. If the SNP keep Rutherglen and Tories retain Tamworth (quite possible) and Mid Beds (also quite possible) then we'll get a couple of weeks of Starmer in crisis to reset the media narrative. If Labour win 2 or 3 of those then it'll just pile on the pain. If Labour win Rutherglen and Tamworth and Lib Dems get Mid Beds with Labour second then the Tories will go into meltdown.
So that we know what to look out for - in what ways would the Tories in meltdown look different from what we are seeing now?
That's the brilliant psychological experiment that the mice are currently running.
Sunak looks like a loser. Different methodologies make it hard to compare, but he's doing about as badly as Major in '96. And he doesn't have the residual kudos for being an election winner in his own right. And Britain is not, as the slogan went, Booming, or showing any signs of preparing to boom.
Standard Operating Procedure here is change leader and hope. But for the reasons listed by @david_herdson upthread, that's not really an option. So all they can do is hang on and hope.
They clearly want to melt down, but they aren't allowed to. The sort of torture some people pay good money for. Apparently.
Meltdown to me means another 1922 committee palaver with the entire parliamentary party stabbing each other in the back. One thing they've sort of managed in the last year is a modicum of unity.
I think the final attempted regicide before the election is there, in the background. It may not happen or it may. A bit like the Prigozhin mutiny (and like that one, I think Sunak would see off the mutineers). Some of the early signs are there.
When it becomes clear that keeping him is more costly electorally than offing him, he'll go. His personal polling falling beneath that of the party would be a sign.
The trouble is there is no king or queen across the water. No Boris.
This is right. It isn't enough for Tory MPs to conclude that Sunak is a liability in that he slips to being less popular than his party (which isn't the case at the moment anyway on most polls).
They also need to think that the act of defenestration wouldn't in itself hurt them still further, and that the new leader they end up with would be better. The new leader has to be an MP, ruling out at least one person of note. Any vaguely capable contender would far rather be the shiny new Leader of the Opposition after an election than the hapless mug who got a shellacking after a handful of months at the helm so will be really hard to persuade to step up rather than wait a short time. That just leaves the howling mad and the terminally sh1t, who aren't an obvious improvement to say the least.
I just can't see it.
The only one is Penny. I'm a fan of the person, but not necessarily the policy agenda of Penny, but she's always been fairly cagey about that anyway.
I think Penny is the only one that Charles would have as PM without making an awful constitutional fuss. I can't see him happily installing Steve Barclay as PM, he'd demand a GE. Penny's sword carrying means he'd probably go with her as caretaker PM. I'd like Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda. I don't think the latter is guaranteed, possibly not even likely, but the very presence of a new leader would mean a shift in policy was demanded. Nobody wants a new leader to do a 'better' version of Sunakism.
Firstly, King Charles' views have absolutely nothing to do with it. He might or might not express a view in private audience with the new PM as to whether an election should be called promptly, but his constitutional duty is simply to appoint as PM whoever, due to being elected leader by the majority party, is the person able to command a majority in the House of Commons. If you think he'd do anything else, you're living in a fantasy world.
Secondly, Mordaunt is very unlikely to have any interest in being the sap who gets to be caretaker for a few months before a shellacking. I'm not 100% certain on this one as she sometimes makes eccentric moves (taking her bid against Sunak to the wire in leadership contest 2 for instance) but very unlikely.
Finally, "Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda" is just your own, personal fantasy and best left for you to enjoy in your private time.
I made quite clear that that was what I wanted rather than what I expected, not sure why the attempted 'zinger' was necessary.
I think Charles is more than capable of throwing a constitutional strop that derails a leadership takeover. He lacks QEII's propriety in that regard imo.
I am convinced Charles would have told Boris and Cummings he would not prorogue Parliament to try and get Brexit done, while the Queen was probably a Leaver, Charles would probably have been a Remainer had he been able to vote. See his first state visits as King were to Germany and France
This isn't a blip. Look at the underlying numbers in both the Deltapoll and Ipsos polls today (helpfully summarised in the threads below). They're awful for the Tories.
At the risk of turning into @Heathener, the prospect of something close to a Tory wipe out is being underplayed.
Just because it's never happened (ignoring what happened to the Liberals) and just because they've existed for so long (so had the Liberals) doesn't mean it's never going to happen.
I agree that one shouldn't entirely rule it out.
The big factor making it pretty unlikely in my view, though, is that there is no sign of the party splitting, nor of an alternative occupant of their political lane making real progress (Farage sometimes makes a noise and is an irritant to the Tories but doesn't really look to be mobilising in a serious way to win seats and grab a very large vote).
The Liberals had both of these in 1918 - a major party split between Lloyd-George's Coalition Liberals and Asquith's continuing Liberals, plus a serious and growing Labour Party in their broadly progressive lane.
Whether it could get worse for the Tories after defeat with those elements coming in - possibly, and you're right we shouldn't assume they will always be there. But it feels unlikely to be a pre-2025 thing due to lack of a split and of a strong emerging contender in their lane.
It was Labour overtaking the Liberals as the main party of the left by 1922 after universal suffrage in 1918 which was the main reason for the collapse of the Liberals as the main non Tory Party.
I agree but I would put it slightly differently. The old Liberal Party was always a coalition between Whigs like Asquith and Radicals like Lloyd George. First the Irish question then the rise of Labour drove most of the former to the Conservatives, while the class warfare of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century moved the Radicals towards Labour. So the Liberals were screwed from both sides. It was already happening before the First World War, in slow motion, but the massive Liberal landslide of 1906 disguised that temporarily.
So only if the Tories are seen as the centrist party will they be wiped out.
And just as you start to despair of Labour having any ambition at all they confirm they'll build the whole of HS2 and NPR (though I'll believe it when I see it).
I know "out of touch" is a cliche but the government really are coming across as very 1996/7 at the moment. Tired and out of ideas.
Their big opportunity in the near term is a poor Labour showing at the byelections. If the SNP keep Rutherglen and Tories retain Tamworth (quite possible) and Mid Beds (also quite possible) then we'll get a couple of weeks of Starmer in crisis to reset the media narrative. If Labour win 2 or 3 of those then it'll just pile on the pain. If Labour win Rutherglen and Tamworth and Lib Dems get Mid Beds with Labour second then the Tories will go into meltdown.
So that we know what to look out for - in what ways would the Tories in meltdown look different from what we are seeing now?
That's the brilliant psychological experiment that the mice are currently running.
Sunak looks like a loser. Different methodologies make it hard to compare, but he's doing about as badly as Major in '96. And he doesn't have the residual kudos for being an election winner in his own right. And Britain is not, as the slogan went, Booming, or showing any signs of preparing to boom.
Standard Operating Procedure here is change leader and hope. But for the reasons listed by @david_herdson upthread, that's not really an option. So all they can do is hang on and hope.
They clearly want to melt down, but they aren't allowed to. The sort of torture some people pay good money for. Apparently.
Meltdown to me means another 1922 committee palaver with the entire parliamentary party stabbing each other in the back. One thing they've sort of managed in the last year is a modicum of unity.
I think the final attempted regicide before the election is there, in the background. It may not happen or it may. A bit like the Prigozhin mutiny (and like that one, I think Sunak would see off the mutineers). Some of the early signs are there.
When it becomes clear that keeping him is more costly electorally than offing him, he'll go. His personal polling falling beneath that of the party would be a sign.
The trouble is there is no king or queen across the water. No Boris.
This is right. It isn't enough for Tory MPs to conclude that Sunak is a liability in that he slips to being less popular than his party (which isn't the case at the moment anyway on most polls).
They also need to think that the act of defenestration wouldn't in itself hurt them still further, and that the new leader they end up with would be better. The new leader has to be an MP, ruling out at least one person of note. Any vaguely capable contender would far rather be the shiny new Leader of the Opposition after an election than the hapless mug who got a shellacking after a handful of months at the helm so will be really hard to persuade to step up rather than wait a short time. That just leaves the howling mad and the terminally sh1t, who aren't an obvious improvement to say the least.
I just can't see it.
The only one is Penny. I'm a fan of the person, but not necessarily the policy agenda of Penny, but she's always been fairly cagey about that anyway.
I think Penny is the only one that Charles would have as PM without making an awful constitutional fuss. I can't see him happily installing Steve Barclay as PM, he'd demand a GE. Penny's sword carrying means he'd probably go with her as caretaker PM. I'd like Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda. I don't think the latter is guaranteed, possibly not even likely, but the very presence of a new leader would mean a shift in policy was demanded. Nobody wants a new leader to do a 'better' version of Sunakism.
Firstly, King Charles' views have absolutely nothing to do with it. He might or might not express a view in private audience with the new PM as to whether an election should be called promptly, but his constitutional duty is simply to appoint as PM whoever, due to being elected leader by the majority party, is the person able to command a majority in the House of Commons. If you think he'd do anything else, you're living in a fantasy world.
Secondly, Mordaunt is very unlikely to have any interest in being the sap who gets to be caretaker for a few months before a shellacking. I'm not 100% certain on this one as she sometimes makes eccentric moves (taking her bid against Sunak to the wire in leadership contest 2 for instance) but very unlikely.
Finally, "Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda" is just your own, personal fantasy and best left for you to enjoy in your private time.
I made quite clear that that was what I wanted rather than what I expected, not sure why the attempted 'zinger' was necessary.
I think Charles is more than capable of throwing a constitutional strop that derails a leadership takeover. He lacks QEII's propriety in that regard imo.
One of many greatnesses of our late queen is that we have no idea what she did to change the course of events, put spanners in the works and what strops she threw if needed.
More than anyone else I can think of in public life she knew how to stay silent about what she did. Maybe our great grandchildren will be able to read all about it when the Peter Hennesseys of 2100 write it up from the sources.
She certainly did a good job of secretly protecting her finances.
What I find funny about the Renewable Energy Foundation's piece is that it deliberately excludes one of the main reasons why these payments exist:
Nuclear.
When the wind is blowing, the grid needs to turn off power supplies. With gas, that's dead easy. (Please turn off your OCGT/CCGT.) With coal, it's a bit harder, and suppliers will happily have negative prices for a bit rather than put plants through thermal contraction/expansion cycles.
With nuclear, they aren't lowering that output with less than 24 hours notice. Unless you're writing a very big cheque.
Which means that the grid is now looking for the cheapest way to get power production below power demand. And the cheapest way is usually to pay for wind turbines to be disconnected.
But this raises an important question: why is it the fault of wind that nuclear is highly inflexible? Why should the UK government be susbsidising new nuclear at 2x the price of wind, when having it as part of the mix inevitably means having to pay wind not to produce?
There's a second important factor. New windfarms have been built in places with inadequate takeaway capacity. In the old days (pre-2012), it was because permitting took no notice of the need to carry wind energy. But these days, almost everything built has been built because transmission capacity has been promised. And, indeed, that transmission capacity has often been paid for by the wind developers themselves.
If National Grid and Ofgem have failed to deliver contractually obliged takeaway capacity, why is that the fault of the wind developer?
Wind is economic in the UK. Indeed, it is highly economic.
Yes, it needs gas backup, but the capital and maintenance costs of a modern CCGT are miniscule, while it is the fuel that is expensive.
She has a point. Is it right to deprive someone of their entire livelihood on the basis of hearsay and anonymous allegations - made to the media not the police?
I suppose you could argue that Brand has the money to fight libel actions but it still doesn’t seem quite right
Maybe key word is 'suspends'?
@Cyclefree probably knows way more than us about this kind of corporate thing, but if there is some kind of allegation of a v serious nature in a workplace are people not sometimes 'suspended' pending an investigation?
Elon Musk has indicated that X, formerly known as Twitter, is considering charging all users for accessing the platform.
The X owner said erecting a paywall around the business would ward off the bots, or automated accounts, that have become a bugbear for Musk.
Speaking in a meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, the Tesla CEO and world’s richest person suggested that X was going to charge its user base. Currently, Twitter only charges users for its subscription service X Premium, which offers perks such as a verified account checkmark and costs $11 a month in the US for iPhones and £11 in the UK.
“We’re moving to having a small monthly payment for use of the system,” Musk said.
And just as you start to despair of Labour having any ambition at all they confirm they'll build the whole of HS2 and NPR (though I'll believe it when I see it).
I know "out of touch" is a cliche but the government really are coming across as very 1996/7 at the moment. Tired and out of ideas.
Their big opportunity in the near term is a poor Labour showing at the byelections. If the SNP keep Rutherglen and Tories retain Tamworth (quite possible) and Mid Beds (also quite possible) then we'll get a couple of weeks of Starmer in crisis to reset the media narrative. If Labour win 2 or 3 of those then it'll just pile on the pain. If Labour win Rutherglen and Tamworth and Lib Dems get Mid Beds with Labour second then the Tories will go into meltdown.
So that we know what to look out for - in what ways would the Tories in meltdown look different from what we are seeing now?
That's the brilliant psychological experiment that the mice are currently running.
Sunak looks like a loser. Different methodologies make it hard to compare, but he's doing about as badly as Major in '96. And he doesn't have the residual kudos for being an election winner in his own right. And Britain is not, as the slogan went, Booming, or showing any signs of preparing to boom.
Standard Operating Procedure here is change leader and hope. But for the reasons listed by @david_herdson upthread, that's not really an option. So all they can do is hang on and hope.
They clearly want to melt down, but they aren't allowed to. The sort of torture some people pay good money for. Apparently.
Meltdown to me means another 1922 committee palaver with the entire parliamentary party stabbing each other in the back. One thing they've sort of managed in the last year is a modicum of unity.
I think the final attempted regicide before the election is there, in the background. It may not happen or it may. A bit like the Prigozhin mutiny (and like that one, I think Sunak would see off the mutineers). Some of the early signs are there.
When it becomes clear that keeping him is more costly electorally than offing him, he'll go. His personal polling falling beneath that of the party would be a sign.
The trouble is there is no king or queen across the water. No Boris.
This is right. It isn't enough for Tory MPs to conclude that Sunak is a liability in that he slips to being less popular than his party (which isn't the case at the moment anyway on most polls).
They also need to think that the act of defenestration wouldn't in itself hurt them still further, and that the new leader they end up with would be better. The new leader has to be an MP, ruling out at least one person of note. Any vaguely capable contender would far rather be the shiny new Leader of the Opposition after an election than the hapless mug who got a shellacking after a handful of months at the helm so will be really hard to persuade to step up rather than wait a short time. That just leaves the howling mad and the terminally sh1t, who aren't an obvious improvement to say the least.
I just can't see it.
The only one is Penny. I'm a fan of the person, but not necessarily the policy agenda of Penny, but she's always been fairly cagey about that anyway.
I think Penny is the only one that Charles would have as PM without making an awful constitutional fuss. I can't see him happily installing Steve Barclay as PM, he'd demand a GE. Penny's sword carrying means he'd probably go with her as caretaker PM. I'd like Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda. I don't think the latter is guaranteed, possibly not even likely, but the very presence of a new leader would mean a shift in policy was demanded. Nobody wants a new leader to do a 'better' version of Sunakism.
Firstly, King Charles' views have absolutely nothing to do with it. He might or might not express a view in private audience with the new PM as to whether an election should be called promptly, but his constitutional duty is simply to appoint as PM whoever, due to being elected leader by the majority party, is the person able to command a majority in the House of Commons. If you think he'd do anything else, you're living in a fantasy world.
Secondly, Mordaunt is very unlikely to have any interest in being the sap who gets to be caretaker for a few months before a shellacking. I'm not 100% certain on this one as she sometimes makes eccentric moves (taking her bid against Sunak to the wire in leadership contest 2 for instance) but very unlikely.
Finally, "Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda" is just your own, personal fantasy and best left for you to enjoy in your private time.
I made quite clear that that was what I wanted rather than what I expected, not sure why the attempted 'zinger' was necessary.
I think Charles is more than capable of throwing a constitutional strop that derails a leadership takeover. He lacks QEII's propriety in that regard imo.
I am convinced Charles would have told Boris and Cummings he would not prorogue Parliament to try and get Brexit done, while the Queen was probably a Leaver, Charles would probably have been a Remainer had he been able to vote. See his first state visits as King were to Germany and France
And his son and daughter-in-law weren’t that welcome in the Caribbean Commonwealth not long before the Coronation.
She has a point. Is it right to deprive someone of their entire livelihood on the basis of hearsay and anonymous allegations - made to the media not the police?
I suppose you could argue that Brand has the money to fight libel actions but it still doesn’t seem quite right
I see your point, he hasn’t been charged let alone convicted of anything
But, in his game, I think he is at the mercy of the market - he has been overpaid in relation to his talent for two decades on the back of the media fawning over him, now the tide seems to have turned, even if he turns out to be just a sexual bully rather than a criminal
And just as you start to despair of Labour having any ambition at all they confirm they'll build the whole of HS2 and NPR (though I'll believe it when I see it).
I know "out of touch" is a cliche but the government really are coming across as very 1996/7 at the moment. Tired and out of ideas.
Their big opportunity in the near term is a poor Labour showing at the byelections. If the SNP keep Rutherglen and Tories retain Tamworth (quite possible) and Mid Beds (also quite possible) then we'll get a couple of weeks of Starmer in crisis to reset the media narrative. If Labour win 2 or 3 of those then it'll just pile on the pain. If Labour win Rutherglen and Tamworth and Lib Dems get Mid Beds with Labour second then the Tories will go into meltdown.
So that we know what to look out for - in what ways would the Tories in meltdown look different from what we are seeing now?
That's the brilliant psychological experiment that the mice are currently running.
Sunak looks like a loser. Different methodologies make it hard to compare, but he's doing about as badly as Major in '96. And he doesn't have the residual kudos for being an election winner in his own right. And Britain is not, as the slogan went, Booming, or showing any signs of preparing to boom.
Standard Operating Procedure here is change leader and hope. But for the reasons listed by @david_herdson upthread, that's not really an option. So all they can do is hang on and hope.
They clearly want to melt down, but they aren't allowed to. The sort of torture some people pay good money for. Apparently.
Meltdown to me means another 1922 committee palaver with the entire parliamentary party stabbing each other in the back. One thing they've sort of managed in the last year is a modicum of unity.
I think the final attempted regicide before the election is there, in the background. It may not happen or it may. A bit like the Prigozhin mutiny (and like that one, I think Sunak would see off the mutineers). Some of the early signs are there.
When it becomes clear that keeping him is more costly electorally than offing him, he'll go. His personal polling falling beneath that of the party would be a sign.
The trouble is there is no king or queen across the water. No Boris.
This is right. It isn't enough for Tory MPs to conclude that Sunak is a liability in that he slips to being less popular than his party (which isn't the case at the moment anyway on most polls).
They also need to think that the act of defenestration wouldn't in itself hurt them still further, and that the new leader they end up with would be better. The new leader has to be an MP, ruling out at least one person of note. Any vaguely capable contender would far rather be the shiny new Leader of the Opposition after an election than the hapless mug who got a shellacking after a handful of months at the helm so will be really hard to persuade to step up rather than wait a short time. That just leaves the howling mad and the terminally sh1t, who aren't an obvious improvement to say the least.
I just can't see it.
The only one is Penny. I'm a fan of the person, but not necessarily the policy agenda of Penny, but she's always been fairly cagey about that anyway.
I think Penny is the only one that Charles would have as PM without making an awful constitutional fuss. I can't see him happily installing Steve Barclay as PM, he'd demand a GE. Penny's sword carrying means he'd probably go with her as caretaker PM. I'd like Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda. I don't think the latter is guaranteed, possibly not even likely, but the very presence of a new leader would mean a shift in policy was demanded. Nobody wants a new leader to do a 'better' version of Sunakism.
Firstly, King Charles' views have absolutely nothing to do with it. He might or might not express a view in private audience with the new PM as to whether an election should be called promptly, but his constitutional duty is simply to appoint as PM whoever, due to being elected leader by the majority party, is the person able to command a majority in the House of Commons. If you think he'd do anything else, you're living in a fantasy world.
Secondly, Mordaunt is very unlikely to have any interest in being the sap who gets to be caretaker for a few months before a shellacking. I'm not 100% certain on this one as she sometimes makes eccentric moves (taking her bid against Sunak to the wire in leadership contest 2 for instance) but very unlikely.
Finally, "Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda" is just your own, personal fantasy and best left for you to enjoy in your private time.
I made quite clear that that was what I wanted rather than what I expected, not sure why the attempted 'zinger' was necessary.
I think Charles is more than capable of throwing a constitutional strop that derails a leadership takeover. He lacks QEII's propriety in that regard imo.
One of many greatnesses of our late queen is that we have no idea what she did to change the course of events, put spanners in the works and what strops she threw if needed.
More than anyone else I can think of in public life she knew how to stay silent about what she did. Maybe our great grandchildren will be able to read all about it when the Peter Hennesseys of 2100 write it up from the sources.
If the monarch puts a thumb on the scales I would rather it be obvious to us than entirely invisible behind a curtain of deference...
"Costly efforts to install the Oracle ERP financial reporting software on Birmingham council's IT systems were also blamed for the local authority's financial state.
The failed bid saw Birmingham City Council forced to spend £46.53million to fix 'urgent' issues with its IT systems in June 2023, as it estimated the total cost of overhauling the system would be in the region of £100million."
(Daily Mail)
WTF?
How is this possible? That is a colossal figure.
Because Oracle ERP is a pile of stinking shit that costs you hundreds of millions to install and never works properly?
She has a point. Is it right to deprive someone of their entire livelihood on the basis of hearsay and anonymous allegations - made to the media not the police?
I suppose you could argue that Brand has the money to fight libel actions but it still doesn’t seem quite right
Maybe key word is 'suspends'?
@Cyclefree probably knows way more than us about this kind of corporate thing, but if there is some kind of allegation of a v serious nature in a workplace are people not sometimes 'suspended' pending an investigation?
Quite often, they are.
Tiger Woods lost zillions in sponsorships for behaviour which wasn’t on the level of Brands - cheating on his wife with various er… professionals, mainly.
She has a point. Is it right to deprive someone of their entire livelihood on the basis of hearsay and anonymous allegations - made to the media not the police?
I suppose you could argue that Brand has the money to fight libel actions but it still doesn’t seem quite right
Maybe key word is 'suspends'?
@Cyclefree probably knows way more than us about this kind of corporate thing, but if there is some kind of allegation of a v serious nature in a workplace are people not sometimes 'suspended' pending an investigation?
Quite often, they are.
Tiger Woods lost zillions in sponsorships for behaviour which wasn’t on the level of Brands - cheating on his wife with various er… professionals, mainly.
And amateurs! Like the next door neighbour's daughter.
This isn't a blip. Look at the underlying numbers in both the Deltapoll and Ipsos polls today (helpfully summarised in the threads below). They're awful for the Tories.
At the risk of turning into @Heathener, the prospect of something close to a Tory wipe out is being underplayed.
Just because it's never happened (ignoring what happened to the Liberals) and just because they've existed for so long (so had the Liberals) doesn't mean it's never going to happen.
I’m pretty instinctively a Tory kind of guy. A Unionist through and through, proud to be British, a believer in capitalism and private enterprise, encouraging people to work hard to get on and rewarding ambition.
I really have no idea what this government is about anymore. It is high tax, low service, short sighted and, particularly anywhere near the Home Office, deeply unpleasant bordering on unBritish. I am in something approaching despair. What on earth happened to Cameron’s new Tories?
Short answer: they lost the referendum.
Long answer: Cameroonism didn't really have a good answer to the question "what are the Conservatives for?" The coalition was a bit of an "in office, not in power" experience and some sort of reaction against that was probably inevitable. I don't like the form that has taken any more than you, but I can sort of understand it. Add to that the change in the age graph; the Conservatives are a "waiting for God" party now in a way they weren't before. That has consequences.
As for the higher tax, lower services issue... I'm willing to cut Sunak some slack there, though I wish he'd be honest about it. The UK has been writing post-dated cheques for decades, and the electorate has rewarded governments for doing that. They were bound to be cashed eventually, and it's not entirely Sunak's fault that it's on his watch.
The medium answer: They lost the referendum, then didn’t stick around to honour the result.
Yes. It was essential to the Tory project in 2015/16 that Cameron, having given us the choice, remained as PM to see it through. If he had thought that a Leave result was undeliverable and was a resignation issue he should have said so in advance, as giving the people the choice was the manifesto commitment. He didn't.
That travesty was compounded by failing to appoint a genuine Brexiteer as PM in his place.
They have never recovered from those two disasters.
And yet, writing that down highlights quite what a mad gamble Cameron took.
There is no way he could plausibly remain PM after June 2016; he had recommended one course of action to the British population, and they voted against it. It wasn't technically a vote of confidence, but it had the same weight.
Besides, Cameron would (presumably) have negotiated an arrangement closer to the EU than May's or Johnson's. Given the buckets of shit poured on May, is it really plausible to think that Cameron negotiating something would have ended better?
"Costly efforts to install the Oracle ERP financial reporting software on Birmingham council's IT systems were also blamed for the local authority's financial state.
The failed bid saw Birmingham City Council forced to spend £46.53million to fix 'urgent' issues with its IT systems in June 2023, as it estimated the total cost of overhauling the system would be in the region of £100million."
(Daily Mail)
WTF?
How is this possible? That is a colossal figure.
Because Oracle ERP is a pile of stinking shit that costs you hundreds of millions to install and never works properly?
She has a point. Is it right to deprive someone of their entire livelihood on the basis of hearsay and anonymous allegations - made to the media not the police?
I suppose you could argue that Brand has the money to fight libel actions but it still doesn’t seem quite right
The reason "talent" can make loadsamoney is free market economics. It has nothing to do with fairness. A key cog in free market economics is companies can let you go, subject to contract, when you are a known liability.
And just as you start to despair of Labour having any ambition at all they confirm they'll build the whole of HS2 and NPR (though I'll believe it when I see it).
I know "out of touch" is a cliche but the government really are coming across as very 1996/7 at the moment. Tired and out of ideas.
Their big opportunity in the near term is a poor Labour showing at the byelections. If the SNP keep Rutherglen and Tories retain Tamworth (quite possible) and Mid Beds (also quite possible) then we'll get a couple of weeks of Starmer in crisis to reset the media narrative. If Labour win 2 or 3 of those then it'll just pile on the pain. If Labour win Rutherglen and Tamworth and Lib Dems get Mid Beds with Labour second then the Tories will go into meltdown.
So that we know what to look out for - in what ways would the Tories in meltdown look different from what we are seeing now?
That's the brilliant psychological experiment that the mice are currently running.
Sunak looks like a loser. Different methodologies make it hard to compare, but he's doing about as badly as Major in '96. And he doesn't have the residual kudos for being an election winner in his own right. And Britain is not, as the slogan went, Booming, or showing any signs of preparing to boom.
Standard Operating Procedure here is change leader and hope. But for the reasons listed by @david_herdson upthread, that's not really an option. So all they can do is hang on and hope.
They clearly want to melt down, but they aren't allowed to. The sort of torture some people pay good money for. Apparently.
Meltdown to me means another 1922 committee palaver with the entire parliamentary party stabbing each other in the back. One thing they've sort of managed in the last year is a modicum of unity.
I think the final attempted regicide before the election is there, in the background. It may not happen or it may. A bit like the Prigozhin mutiny (and like that one, I think Sunak would see off the mutineers). Some of the early signs are there.
When it becomes clear that keeping him is more costly electorally than offing him, he'll go. His personal polling falling beneath that of the party would be a sign.
The trouble is there is no king or queen across the water. No Boris.
This is right. It isn't enough for Tory MPs to conclude that Sunak is a liability in that he slips to being less popular than his party (which isn't the case at the moment anyway on most polls).
They also need to think that the act of defenestration wouldn't in itself hurt them still further, and that the new leader they end up with would be better. The new leader has to be an MP, ruling out at least one person of note. Any vaguely capable contender would far rather be the shiny new Leader of the Opposition after an election than the hapless mug who got a shellacking after a handful of months at the helm so will be really hard to persuade to step up rather than wait a short time. That just leaves the howling mad and the terminally sh1t, who aren't an obvious improvement to say the least.
I just can't see it.
The only one is Penny. I'm a fan of the person, but not necessarily the policy agenda of Penny, but she's always been fairly cagey about that anyway.
I think Penny is the only one that Charles would have as PM without making an awful constitutional fuss. I can't see him happily installing Steve Barclay as PM, he'd demand a GE. Penny's sword carrying means he'd probably go with her as caretaker PM. I'd like Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda. I don't think the latter is guaranteed, possibly not even likely, but the very presence of a new leader would mean a shift in policy was demanded. Nobody wants a new leader to do a 'better' version of Sunakism.
Firstly, King Charles' views have absolutely nothing to do with it. He might or might not express a view in private audience with the new PM as to whether an election should be called promptly, but his constitutional duty is simply to appoint as PM whoever, due to being elected leader by the majority party, is the person able to command a majority in the House of Commons. If you think he'd do anything else, you're living in a fantasy world.
Secondly, Mordaunt is very unlikely to have any interest in being the sap who gets to be caretaker for a few months before a shellacking. I'm not 100% certain on this one as she sometimes makes eccentric moves (taking her bid against Sunak to the wire in leadership contest 2 for instance) but very unlikely.
Finally, "Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda" is just your own, personal fantasy and best left for you to enjoy in your private time.
I made quite clear that that was what I wanted rather than what I expected, not sure why the attempted 'zinger' was necessary.
I think Charles is more than capable of throwing a constitutional strop that derails a leadership takeover. He lacks QEII's propriety in that regard imo.
I am convinced Charles would have told Boris and Cummings he would not prorogue Parliament to try and get Brexit done, while the Queen was probably a Leaver, Charles would probably have been a Remainer had he been able to vote. See his first state visits as King were to Germany and France
And his son and daughter-in-law weren’t that welcome in the Caribbean Commonwealth not long before the Coronation.
Most of the Caribbean Commonwealth are now republics or heading that way anyway
She has a point. Is it right to deprive someone of their entire livelihood on the basis of hearsay and anonymous allegations - made to the media not the police?
I suppose you could argue that Brand has the money to fight libel actions but it still doesn’t seem quite right
Maybe key word is 'suspends'?
@Cyclefree probably knows way more than us about this kind of corporate thing, but if there is some kind of allegation of a v serious nature in a workplace are people not sometimes 'suspended' pending an investigation?
If fhere is no court case, and no prosecution, will YouTube “desuspend” him? I rather doubt it, but if so fair enough
If they don’t then this is tantamount to trial and conviction by media and anonymous allegation, with the punishment being: end of career
Without the courts even being involved. That makes me deeply uneasy
And I don’t even stan Brand. He wasn't funny and he got far too much sex for my liking
She has a point. Is it right to deprive someone of their entire livelihood on the basis of hearsay and anonymous allegations - made to the media not the police?
I suppose you could argue that Brand has the money to fight libel actions but it still doesn’t seem quite right
Maybe key word is 'suspends'?
@Cyclefree probably knows way more than us about this kind of corporate thing, but if there is some kind of allegation of a v serious nature in a workplace are people not sometimes 'suspended' pending an investigation?
Quite often, they are.
Tiger Woods lost zillions in sponsorships for behaviour which wasn’t on the level of Brands - cheating on his wife with various er… professionals, mainly.
And amateurs! Like the next door neighbour's daughter.
Yup.
So Brand has nothing to whine about. If you are in the entertainment business, your image can affect others. So it matters. “But it’s legal” doesn’t work for that.
This isn't a blip. Look at the underlying numbers in both the Deltapoll and Ipsos polls today (helpfully summarised in the threads below). They're awful for the Tories.
At the risk of turning into @Heathener, the prospect of something close to a Tory wipe out is being underplayed.
Just because it's never happened (ignoring what happened to the Liberals) and just because they've existed for so long (so had the Liberals) doesn't mean it's never going to happen.
I agree that one shouldn't entirely rule it out.
The big factor making it pretty unlikely in my view, though, is that there is no sign of the party splitting, nor of an alternative occupant of their political lane making real progress (Farage sometimes makes a noise and is an irritant to the Tories but doesn't really look to be mobilising in a serious way to win seats and grab a very large vote).
The Liberals had both of these in 1918 - a major party split between Lloyd-George's Coalition Liberals and Asquith's continuing Liberals, plus a serious and growing Labour Party in their broadly progressive lane.
Whether it could get worse for the Tories after defeat with those elements coming in - possibly, and you're right we shouldn't assume they will always be there. But it feels unlikely to be a pre-2025 thing due to lack of a split and of a strong emerging contender in their lane.
It was Labour overtaking the Liberals as the main party of the left by 1922 after universal suffrage in 1918 which was the main reason for the collapse of the Liberals as the main non Tory Party.
I agree but I would put it slightly differently. The old Liberal Party was always a coalition between Whigs like Asquith and Radicals like Lloyd George. First the Irish question then the rise of Labour drove most of the former to the Conservatives, while the class warfare of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century moved the Radicals towards Labour. So the Liberals were screwed from both sides. It was already happening before the First World War, in slow motion, but the massive Liberal landslide of 1906 disguised that temporarily.
So only if the Tories are seen as the centrist party will they be wiped out.
Indeed, as Nick Clegg discovered in 2015 a pure ideological centrist party is rarely rewarded at the ballot box, ending up squeezed between right and left.
Macron's En Marche perhaps a rare exception but then he was helped by division between multiple parties in the first round and then facing the far right in the run off
And just as you start to despair of Labour having any ambition at all they confirm they'll build the whole of HS2 and NPR (though I'll believe it when I see it).
I know "out of touch" is a cliche but the government really are coming across as very 1996/7 at the moment. Tired and out of ideas.
Their big opportunity in the near term is a poor Labour showing at the byelections. If the SNP keep Rutherglen and Tories retain Tamworth (quite possible) and Mid Beds (also quite possible) then we'll get a couple of weeks of Starmer in crisis to reset the media narrative. If Labour win 2 or 3 of those then it'll just pile on the pain. If Labour win Rutherglen and Tamworth and Lib Dems get Mid Beds with Labour second then the Tories will go into meltdown.
So that we know what to look out for - in what ways would the Tories in meltdown look different from what we are seeing now?
That's the brilliant psychological experiment that the mice are currently running.
Sunak looks like a loser. Different methodologies make it hard to compare, but he's doing about as badly as Major in '96. And he doesn't have the residual kudos for being an election winner in his own right. And Britain is not, as the slogan went, Booming, or showing any signs of preparing to boom.
Standard Operating Procedure here is change leader and hope. But for the reasons listed by @david_herdson upthread, that's not really an option. So all they can do is hang on and hope.
They clearly want to melt down, but they aren't allowed to. The sort of torture some people pay good money for. Apparently.
Meltdown to me means another 1922 committee palaver with the entire parliamentary party stabbing each other in the back. One thing they've sort of managed in the last year is a modicum of unity.
I think the final attempted regicide before the election is there, in the background. It may not happen or it may. A bit like the Prigozhin mutiny (and like that one, I think Sunak would see off the mutineers). Some of the early signs are there.
When it becomes clear that keeping him is more costly electorally than offing him, he'll go. His personal polling falling beneath that of the party would be a sign.
The trouble is there is no king or queen across the water. No Boris.
This is right. It isn't enough for Tory MPs to conclude that Sunak is a liability in that he slips to being less popular than his party (which isn't the case at the moment anyway on most polls).
They also need to think that the act of defenestration wouldn't in itself hurt them still further, and that the new leader they end up with would be better. The new leader has to be an MP, ruling out at least one person of note. Any vaguely capable contender would far rather be the shiny new Leader of the Opposition after an election than the hapless mug who got a shellacking after a handful of months at the helm so will be really hard to persuade to step up rather than wait a short time. That just leaves the howling mad and the terminally sh1t, who aren't an obvious improvement to say the least.
I just can't see it.
The only one is Penny. I'm a fan of the person, but not necessarily the policy agenda of Penny, but she's always been fairly cagey about that anyway.
I think Penny is the only one that Charles would have as PM without making an awful constitutional fuss. I can't see him happily installing Steve Barclay as PM, he'd demand a GE. Penny's sword carrying means he'd probably go with her as caretaker PM. I'd like Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda. I don't think the latter is guaranteed, possibly not even likely, but the very presence of a new leader would mean a shift in policy was demanded. Nobody wants a new leader to do a 'better' version of Sunakism.
Firstly, King Charles' views have absolutely nothing to do with it. He might or might not express a view in private audience with the new PM as to whether an election should be called promptly, but his constitutional duty is simply to appoint as PM whoever, due to being elected leader by the majority party, is the person able to command a majority in the House of Commons. If you think he'd do anything else, you're living in a fantasy world.
Secondly, Mordaunt is very unlikely to have any interest in being the sap who gets to be caretaker for a few months before a shellacking. I'm not 100% certain on this one as she sometimes makes eccentric moves (taking her bid against Sunak to the wire in leadership contest 2 for instance) but very unlikely.
Finally, "Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda" is just your own, personal fantasy and best left for you to enjoy in your private time.
I made quite clear that that was what I wanted rather than what I expected, not sure why the attempted 'zinger' was necessary.
I think Charles is more than capable of throwing a constitutional strop that derails a leadership takeover. He lacks QEII's propriety in that regard imo.
I am convinced Charles would have told Boris and Cummings he would not prorogue Parliament to try and get Brexit done, while the Queen was probably a Leaver, Charles would probably have been a Remainer had he been able to vote. See his first state visits as King were to Germany and France
And his son and daughter-in-law weren’t that welcome in the Caribbean Commonwealth not long before the Coronation.
Most of the Caribbean Commonwealth are now republics or heading that way anyway
She has a point. Is it right to deprive someone of their entire livelihood on the basis of hearsay and anonymous allegations - made to the media not the police?
I suppose you could argue that Brand has the money to fight libel actions but it still doesn’t seem quite right
Maybe key word is 'suspends'?
@Cyclefree probably knows way more than us about this kind of corporate thing, but if there is some kind of allegation of a v serious nature in a workplace are people not sometimes 'suspended' pending an investigation?
If fhere is no court case, and no prosecution, will YouTube “desuspend” him? I rather doubt it, but if so fair enough
If they don’t then this is tantamount to trial and conviction by media and anonymous allegation, with the punishment being: end of career
Without the courts even being involved. That makes me deeply uneasy
And I don’t even stan Brand. He wasn't funny and he got far too much sex for my liking
Tons of entertainers have lost their rides - and often for stuff that isn’t especially bad. See Tiger Woods, mentioned above.
What laws did Lance Armstrong actually break?
If you are in entertainment, you need to be better than “it’s all legal”. It needs to be “my reputation is not a negative for my sponsors.”
"Costly efforts to install the Oracle ERP financial reporting software on Birmingham council's IT systems were also blamed for the local authority's financial state.
The failed bid saw Birmingham City Council forced to spend £46.53million to fix 'urgent' issues with its IT systems in June 2023, as it estimated the total cost of overhauling the system would be in the region of £100million."
(Daily Mail)
WTF?
How is this possible? That is a colossal figure.
Because Oracle ERP is a pile of stinking shit that costs you hundreds of millions to install and never works properly?
The weird thing is, central Albi is rather lovely. Even its famously insane redbrick fortified cathedral (designed to oppress the Albigensian Heresy)
I thought Albi was lovely too.
I once did a photography course with an English ex-pat in the Tarn region and we spent a day in Albi.
I remember tall buildings hunched right up against the river.
Tarn region was a beautiful and seemingly rather undiscovered corner of rural france iirc.
Indeed: it’s never been firmly on the tourist trail. Too far from the sea or the mountains - or any major sites
But I was here ten years ago and I remember the centre being bustling and lively. Not now
Are you doing Cordes-sur-Ciel?
It's a must-see.
Sadly I fly home tomorrow
Honestly we are so spoiled in Europe. There is so much to see and do everywhere - certainly in England France and Italy, and to an extent in Spain Portugal Greece and Germany
And Switzerland. Even Belgium has stuff. And Holland
In fact the only shit place in western or southern Europe is Denmark
This isn't a blip. Look at the underlying numbers in both the Deltapoll and Ipsos polls today (helpfully summarised in the threads below). They're awful for the Tories.
At the risk of turning into @Heathener, the prospect of something close to a Tory wipe out is being underplayed.
Just because it's never happened (ignoring what happened to the Liberals) and just because they've existed for so long (so had the Liberals) doesn't mean it's never going to happen.
I’m pretty instinctively a Tory kind of guy. A Unionist through and through, proud to be British, a believer in capitalism and private enterprise, encouraging people to work hard to get on and rewarding ambition.
I really have no idea what this government is about anymore. It is high tax, low service, short sighted and, particularly anywhere near the Home Office, deeply unpleasant bordering on unBritish. I am in something approaching despair. What on earth happened to Cameron’s new Tories?
Short answer: they lost the referendum.
Long answer: Cameroonism didn't really have a good answer to the question "what are the Conservatives for?" The coalition was a bit of an "in office, not in power" experience and some sort of reaction against that was probably inevitable. I don't like the form that has taken any more than you, but I can sort of understand it. Add to that the change in the age graph; the Conservatives are a "waiting for God" party now in a way they weren't before. That has consequences.
As for the higher tax, lower services issue... I'm willing to cut Sunak some slack there, though I wish he'd be honest about it. The UK has been writing post-dated cheques for decades, and the electorate has rewarded governments for doing that. They were bound to be cashed eventually, and it's not entirely Sunak's fault that it's on his watch.
The medium answer: They lost the referendum, then didn’t stick around to honour the result.
Yes. It was essential to the Tory project in 2015/16 that Cameron, having given us the choice, remained as PM to see it through. If he had thought that a Leave result was undeliverable and was a resignation issue he should have said so in advance, as giving the people the choice was the manifesto commitment. He didn't.
That travesty was compounded by failing to appoint a genuine Brexiteer as PM in his place.
They have never recovered from those two disasters.
And yet, writing that down highlights quite what a mad gamble Cameron took.
There is no way he could plausibly remain PM after June 2016; he had recommended one course of action to the British population, and they voted against it. It wasn't technically a vote of confidence, but it had the same weight.
Besides, Cameron would (presumably) have negotiated an arrangement closer to the EU than May's or Johnson's. Given the buckets of shit poured on May, is it really plausible to think that Cameron negotiating something would have ended better?
I think so.
He shouldn’t have taken a prominent role in the referendum, so he could still have been PM no matter what. But even given the way it panned out, he should have hung around to make a deal as he said he would.
By the way, I hear Aklu Plaza is closing. They couldn’t get permission for the ‘banqueting suite/community space/wedding venue’ on the third floor in time, and the ‘shop’ downstairs was a rat infested front
She has a point. Is it right to deprive someone of their entire livelihood on the basis of hearsay and anonymous allegations - made to the media not the police?
I suppose you could argue that Brand has the money to fight libel actions but it still doesn’t seem quite right
Following the universal rule that social media is getting worse in the 2020s, YouTube has become even more capricious and arbitrary over the past year or two. I posted the other day how many military enthusiasts and historians have set up their own platform (armchairhistory.tv?) to bypass YouTubes habit of demonetizing those with violent content, in the same way as the film/media crowd set up Nebula to get around fair use violations. The future for Brand and his cohort is to set up their own hosting website, a GBNews/YouTube hybrid where they can pontificate to their heart's content.
Weirdly, because you spend most of your time on Twitter and I live on YouTube, this might be the only time ever where I am ahead of the curve zeitgeist. Does the Knappers Gazette need a YouTube correspondent?
The weird thing is, central Albi is rather lovely. Even its famously insane redbrick fortified cathedral (designed to oppress the Albigensian Heresy)
I thought Albi was lovely too.
I once did a photography course with an English ex-pat in the Tarn region and we spent a day in Albi.
I remember tall buildings hunched right up against the river.
Tarn region was a beautiful and seemingly rather undiscovered corner of rural france iirc.
Indeed: it’s never been firmly on the tourist trail. Too far from the sea or the mountains - or any major sites
But I was here ten years ago and I remember the centre being bustling and lively. Not now
Are you doing Cordes-sur-Ciel?
It's a must-see.
Sadly I fly home tomorrow
Honestly we are so spoiled in Europe. There is so much to see and do everywhere - certainly in England France and Italy, and to an extent in Spain Portugal Greece and Germany
And Switzerland. Even Belgium has stuff. And Holland
In fact the only shit place in western or southern Europe is Denmark
I’m off to Southern Jutland next week at an incredibly inaccessible client (fly to Hamburg, 2.5 hour drive). Nice beaches and gentle countryside around there.
She has a point. Is it right to deprive someone of their entire livelihood on the basis of hearsay and anonymous allegations - made to the media not the police?
I suppose you could argue that Brand has the money to fight libel actions but it still doesn’t seem quite right
Maybe key word is 'suspends'?
@Cyclefree probably knows way more than us about this kind of corporate thing, but if there is some kind of allegation of a v serious nature in a workplace are people not sometimes 'suspended' pending an investigation?
Quite often, they are.
Tiger Woods lost zillions in sponsorships for behaviour which wasn’t on the level of Brands - cheating on his wife with various er… professionals, mainly.
And amateurs! Like the next door neighbour's daughter.
Yup.
So Brand has nothing to whine about. If you are in the entertainment business, your image can affect others. So it matters. “But it’s legal” doesn’t work for that.
Hang on. I get all this if Brand is found guilty of what he is being accused of. But Leon is right. At the moment he is being cancelled based on (very credible) accusations.
Suspending YouTube income if held for him to be repaid if he was shown not to be guilty seems okay. But scrubbing content from Channel 4 seems way out of line. And should we not give individuals the choice as to whether they want to spend money and time at his shows?
I think the man is a money-grabbing turd these days, but I think we play into the hands of those stoking a culture war by reacting this way.
ETA: just to be clear, I suspect the allegations are probably true and then most/all of these things should happen. But there needs to be a sequence to this stuff imo
She has a point. Is it right to deprive someone of their entire livelihood on the basis of hearsay and anonymous allegations - made to the media not the police?
I suppose you could argue that Brand has the money to fight libel actions but it still doesn’t seem quite right
Maybe key word is 'suspends'?
@Cyclefree probably knows way more than us about this kind of corporate thing, but if there is some kind of allegation of a v serious nature in a workplace are people not sometimes 'suspended' pending an investigation?
If fhere is no court case, and no prosecution, will YouTube “desuspend” him? I rather doubt it, but if so fair enough
If they don’t then this is tantamount to trial and conviction by media and anonymous allegation, with the punishment being: end of career
Without the courts even being involved. That makes me deeply uneasy
And I don’t even stan Brand. He wasn't funny and he got far too much sex for my liking
Tons of entertainers have lost their rides - and often for stuff that isn’t especially bad. See Tiger Woods, mentioned above.
What laws did Lance Armstrong actually break?
If you are in entertainment, you need to be better than “it’s all legal”. It needs to be “my reputation is not a negative for my sponsors.”
That’s a valid argument, on the face of it
And yet it is also an invitation to any malefactor to destroy a public figure they don’t like by merely gathering some “anonymous accounts” and splashing them all over the media
You never have to stand them up in court. You never have to prove anything. You can destroy someone by innuendo. smear and anonymous denunciation
She has a point. Is it right to deprive someone of their entire livelihood on the basis of hearsay and anonymous allegations - made to the media not the police?
I suppose you could argue that Brand has the money to fight libel actions but it still doesn’t seem quite right
Maybe key word is 'suspends'?
@Cyclefree probably knows way more than us about this kind of corporate thing, but if there is some kind of allegation of a v serious nature in a workplace are people not sometimes 'suspended' pending an investigation?
Quite often, they are.
Tiger Woods lost zillions in sponsorships for behaviour which wasn’t on the level of Brands - cheating on his wife with various er… professionals, mainly.
And amateurs! Like the next door neighbour's daughter.
Yup.
So Brand has nothing to whine about. If you are in the entertainment business, your image can affect others. So it matters. “But it’s legal” doesn’t work for that.
Hang on. I get all this if Brand is found guilty of what he is being accused of. But Leon is right. At the moment he is being cancelled based on (very credible) accusations.
Suspending YouTube income if held for him to be repaid if he was shown not to be guilty seems okay. But scrubbing content from Channel 4 seems way out of line. And should we not give individuals the choice as to whether they want to spend money and time at his shows?
I think the man is a money-grabbing turd these days, but I think we play into the hands of those stoking a culture war by reacting this way.
It’s always been thus. When the scandal breaks, the sponsors run. And try and scrub their record clean.
NHS consultants offer to call off strikes for 12% pay rise in apparent olive branch
Guardian
Sunak is hoping that the public will blame doctors and consultants for the waiting lists , of course ignoring the fact they were rising before covid and the current strikes . It’s a risky gamble as more strikes will see them top 8 million .
Of course backing down now will see the public asking why didn’t you settle earlier .
She has a point. Is it right to deprive someone of their entire livelihood on the basis of hearsay and anonymous allegations - made to the media not the police?
I suppose you could argue that Brand has the money to fight libel actions but it still doesn’t seem quite right
Following the universal rule that social media is getting worse in the 2020s, YouTube has become even more capricious and arbitrary over the past year or two. I posted the other day how many military enthusiasts and historians have set up their own platform (armchairhistory.tv?) to bypass YouTubes habit of demonetizing those with violent content, in the same way as the film/media crowd set up Nebula to get around fair use violations. The future for Brand and his cohort is to set up their own hosting website, a GBNews/YouTube hybrid where they can pontificate to their heart's content.
Weirdly, because you spend most of your time on Twitter and I live on YouTube, this might be the only time ever where I am ahead of the curve zeitgeist. Does the Knappers Gazette need a YouTube correspondent?
YouTube and TikTok need government legislation banning streaming services from just automatically loading up the next mindless video when the last one ends. Or at least forcing them to do that for under 18s. TikTok is the worst. My son sits staring at it for hours at a time sometimes, constant stream of nothingness. Shows great irritation when we suggest he switches off and gets some fresh air.
(I recognise the hypocrisy of me writing this on an iPhone I spend far too much time on).
If this woman in LA says Brand raped her then she needs to accuse him in court
Likewise the 16 year old girlfriend. She claims sexual assault
SO GO TO THE POLICE
Enough of this anonymous denouncing. Even in court their identities will be disguised. So what are they afraid of? Brand is not gonna send the mafia after them
She has a point. Is it right to deprive someone of their entire livelihood on the basis of hearsay and anonymous allegations - made to the media not the police?
I suppose you could argue that Brand has the money to fight libel actions but it still doesn’t seem quite right
Following the universal rule that social media is getting worse in the 2020s, YouTube has become even more capricious and arbitrary over the past year or two. I posted the other day how many military enthusiasts and historians have set up their own platform (armchairhistory.tv?) to bypass YouTubes habit of demonetizing those with violent content, in the same way as the film/media crowd set up Nebula to get around fair use violations. The future for Brand and his cohort is to set up their own hosting website, a GBNews/YouTube hybrid where they can pontificate to their heart's content.
Weirdly, because you spend most of your time on Twitter and I live on YouTube, this might be the only time ever where I am ahead of the curve zeitgeist. Does the Knappers Gazette need a YouTube correspondent?
YouTube and TikTok need government legislation banning streaming services from just automatically loading up the next mindless video when the last one ends. Or at least forcing them to do that for under 18s. TikTok is the worst. My son sits staring at it for hours at a time sometimes, constant stream of nothingness. Shows great irritation when we suggest he switches off and gets some fresh air.
(I recognise the hypocrisy of me writing this on an iPhone I spend far too much time on).
You can switch that autoplay off on YouTube. Or you could. I'm on a train and cannot check. ☹️
Rachel Wolf @racheljanetwolf · 3h I'm a bit worried Liz Truss is getting ready to run for leader again after the election. Is that a stupid worry?
Sam Freedman @Samfr · 1h On one hand I think she'd only get about 5 votes from other MPs. On the other hand that might be enough to get into the second round based on today's polls...
This isn't a blip. Look at the underlying numbers in both the Deltapoll and Ipsos polls today (helpfully summarised in the threads below). They're awful for the Tories.
At the risk of turning into @Heathener, the prospect of something close to a Tory wipe out is being underplayed.
Just because it's never happened (ignoring what happened to the Liberals) and just because they've existed for so long (so had the Liberals) doesn't mean it's never going to happen.
I’m pretty instinctively a Tory kind of guy. A Unionist through and through, proud to be British, a believer in capitalism and private enterprise, encouraging people to work hard to get on and rewarding ambition.
I really have no idea what this government is about anymore. It is high tax, low service, short sighted and, particularly anywhere near the Home Office, deeply unpleasant bordering on unBritish. I am in something approaching despair. What on earth happened to Cameron’s new Tories?
Short answer: they lost the referendum.
Long answer: Cameroonism didn't really have a good answer to the question "what are the Conservatives for?" The coalition was a bit of an "in office, not in power" experience and some sort of reaction against that was probably inevitable. I don't like the form that has taken any more than you, but I can sort of understand it. Add to that the change in the age graph; the Conservatives are a "waiting for God" party now in a way they weren't before. That has consequences.
As for the higher tax, lower services issue... I'm willing to cut Sunak some slack there, though I wish he'd be honest about it. The UK has been writing post-dated cheques for decades, and the electorate has rewarded governments for doing that. They were bound to be cashed eventually, and it's not entirely Sunak's fault that it's on his watch.
The medium answer: They lost the referendum, then didn’t stick around to honour the result.
Yes. It was essential to the Tory project in 2015/16 that Cameron, having given us the choice, remained as PM to see it through. If he had thought that a Leave result was undeliverable and was a resignation issue he should have said so in advance, as giving the people the choice was the manifesto commitment. He didn't.
That travesty was compounded by failing to appoint a genuine Brexiteer as PM in his place.
They have never recovered from those two disasters.
And yet, writing that down highlights quite what a mad gamble Cameron took.
There is no way he could plausibly remain PM after June 2016; he had recommended one course of action to the British population, and they voted against it. It wasn't technically a vote of confidence, but it had the same weight.
Besides, Cameron would (presumably) have negotiated an arrangement closer to the EU than May's or Johnson's. Given the buckets of shit poured on May, is it really plausible to think that Cameron negotiating something would have ended better?
I think so.
He shouldn’t have taken a prominent role in the referendum, so he could still have been PM no matter what. But even given the way it panned out, he should have hung around to make a deal as he said he would.
By the way, I hear Aklu Plaza is closing. They couldn’t get permission for the ‘banqueting suite/community space/wedding venue’ on the third floor in time, and the ‘shop’ downstairs was a rat infested front
Are we still talking about the Conservative Party?
And just as you start to despair of Labour having any ambition at all they confirm they'll build the whole of HS2 and NPR (though I'll believe it when I see it).
I know "out of touch" is a cliche but the government really are coming across as very 1996/7 at the moment. Tired and out of ideas.
Their big opportunity in the near term is a poor Labour showing at the byelections. If the SNP keep Rutherglen and Tories retain Tamworth (quite possible) and Mid Beds (also quite possible) then we'll get a couple of weeks of Starmer in crisis to reset the media narrative. If Labour win 2 or 3 of those then it'll just pile on the pain. If Labour win Rutherglen and Tamworth and Lib Dems get Mid Beds with Labour second then the Tories will go into meltdown.
So that we know what to look out for - in what ways would the Tories in meltdown look different from what we are seeing now?
That's the brilliant psychological experiment that the mice are currently running.
Sunak looks like a loser. Different methodologies make it hard to compare, but he's doing about as badly as Major in '96. And he doesn't have the residual kudos for being an election winner in his own right. And Britain is not, as the slogan went, Booming, or showing any signs of preparing to boom.
Standard Operating Procedure here is change leader and hope. But for the reasons listed by @david_herdson upthread, that's not really an option. So all they can do is hang on and hope.
They clearly want to melt down, but they aren't allowed to. The sort of torture some people pay good money for. Apparently.
Meltdown to me means another 1922 committee palaver with the entire parliamentary party stabbing each other in the back. One thing they've sort of managed in the last year is a modicum of unity.
I think the final attempted regicide before the election is there, in the background. It may not happen or it may. A bit like the Prigozhin mutiny (and like that one, I think Sunak would see off the mutineers). Some of the early signs are there.
When it becomes clear that keeping him is more costly electorally than offing him, he'll go. His personal polling falling beneath that of the party would be a sign.
The trouble is there is no king or queen across the water. No Boris.
This is right. It isn't enough for Tory MPs to conclude that Sunak is a liability in that he slips to being less popular than his party (which isn't the case at the moment anyway on most polls).
They also need to think that the act of defenestration wouldn't in itself hurt them still further, and that the new leader they end up with would be better. The new leader has to be an MP, ruling out at least one person of note. Any vaguely capable contender would far rather be the shiny new Leader of the Opposition after an election than the hapless mug who got a shellacking after a handful of months at the helm so will be really hard to persuade to step up rather than wait a short time. That just leaves the howling mad and the terminally sh1t, who aren't an obvious improvement to say the least.
I just can't see it.
The only one is Penny. I'm a fan of the person, but not necessarily the policy agenda of Penny, but she's always been fairly cagey about that anyway.
I think Penny is the only one that Charles would have as PM without making an awful constitutional fuss. I can't see him happily installing Steve Barclay as PM, he'd demand a GE. Penny's sword carrying means he'd probably go with her as caretaker PM. I'd like Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda. I don't think the latter is guaranteed, possibly not even likely, but the very presence of a new leader would mean a shift in policy was demanded. Nobody wants a new leader to do a 'better' version of Sunakism.
Firstly, King Charles' views have absolutely nothing to do with it. He might or might not express a view in private audience with the new PM as to whether an election should be called promptly, but his constitutional duty is simply to appoint as PM whoever, due to being elected leader by the majority party, is the person able to command a majority in the House of Commons. If you think he'd do anything else, you're living in a fantasy world.
Secondly, Mordaunt is very unlikely to have any interest in being the sap who gets to be caretaker for a few months before a shellacking. I'm not 100% certain on this one as she sometimes makes eccentric moves (taking her bid against Sunak to the wire in leadership contest 2 for instance) but very unlikely.
Finally, "Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda" is just your own, personal fantasy and best left for you to enjoy in your private time.
I made quite clear that that was what I wanted rather than what I expected, not sure why the attempted 'zinger' was necessary.
I think Charles is more than capable of throwing a constitutional strop that derails a leadership takeover. He lacks QEII's propriety in that regard imo.
I am convinced Charles would have told Boris and Cummings he would not prorogue Parliament to try and get Brexit done, while the Queen was probably a Leaver, Charles would probably have been a Remainer had he been able to vote. See his first state visits as King were to Germany and France
Isn't the point with that saga that Johnson and Cummings lied to the Queen, as they presumably would have done to Charles?
They very specifically did not advise her to prorogue Parliament to enable them to "get Brexit done" and indeed actively concealed the true purpose of preventing Parliament from being able to legislate to block a no deal Brexit. The advice given on behalf of the PM to the Queen was that it was a prorogation in line with any other, at the end of a long Parliamentary session to prepare a new legislative agenda. That was untrue, and she might have questioned its veracity itself, but it's beyond unprecedented for the Monarch to say "I'm not following the PM's advice because he's a liar" - that is massive constitutional crisis time.
We don't know what the Queen (or King now) would have done had they been advised to prorogue on the novel (and highly dubious) basis that it was a clever wheeze to help them "get Brexit done" because that simply wasn't the advice.
Indeed, when it went to court, a very notable aspect is the Government simply offered no evidence on the reason for prorogation, relying solely on an argument that the question was not justiciable. The only possible reason for that was that to do so would involve the Government minister (or PM) committing perjury by repeating the lie told to the Queen (and if they'd given the true reason, they'd be admitting lying to the Queen, which would likely invalidate the prorogation anyway).
That whole, rather complex, story was drowned out by shouts of "Get Brexit Done!" and "Bollocks to Brexit!" But it's a very squalid tale wherever you are on that debate. The Queen was directly misled by the PM such that her only options were to illegally (as it turns out) prorogue Parliament, or to call him a liar directly and provoke an even more major crisis. It was appalling, and I can only hope she had a brief smile when the same character trait as he'd so brazenly exhibited to her also caused his downfall, meaning that she was able to accept his resignation as her penultimate official duty as Monarch.
She has a point. Is it right to deprive someone of their entire livelihood on the basis of hearsay and anonymous allegations - made to the media not the police?
I suppose you could argue that Brand has the money to fight libel actions but it still doesn’t seem quite right
Maybe key word is 'suspends'?
@Cyclefree probably knows way more than us about this kind of corporate thing, but if there is some kind of allegation of a v serious nature in a workplace are people not sometimes 'suspended' pending an investigation?
Quite often, they are.
Tiger Woods lost zillions in sponsorships for behaviour which wasn’t on the level of Brands - cheating on his wife with various er… professionals, mainly.
And amateurs! Like the next door neighbour's daughter.
Yup.
So Brand has nothing to whine about. If you are in the entertainment business, your image can affect others. So it matters. “But it’s legal” doesn’t work for that.
Hang on. I get all this if Brand is found guilty of what he is being accused of. But Leon is right. At the moment he is being cancelled based on (very credible) accusations.
Suspending YouTube income if held for him to be repaid if he was shown not to be guilty seems okay. But scrubbing content from Channel 4 seems way out of line. And should we not give individuals the choice as to whether they want to spend money and time at his shows?
I think the man is a money-grabbing turd these days, but I think we play into the hands of those stoking a culture war by reacting this way.
It’s always been thus. When the scandal breaks, the sponsors run. And try and scrub their record clean.
Yeah I get that this is how it is, but the sponsors and/or show hosts should get shit for it, not ‘Brand has nothing to whine about’.
Plus on the free market argument it can work both ways. Performers can argue ‘I need this astronomical amount because I might get cancelled tomorrow’.
Though Leon misses the point a bit too about going to court, because rape conviction rates are so woefully low.
She has a point. Is it right to deprive someone of their entire livelihood on the basis of hearsay and anonymous allegations - made to the media not the police?
I suppose you could argue that Brand has the money to fight libel actions but it still doesn’t seem quite right
There are complex issues here to unravel. Firstly, most normal mature people simply have nothing to do with the sorts of people who did what Brand did in the Sachs matter - if you ever thought he was OK you now know you were wrong.
Secondly people who promote themselves by an image of amoral selfishness run the risk of being demoted by the less attractive side of that character. He is, in a free society, free to make lots of money from bad books and talentless chuntering. The public are equally free to switch off.
Thirdly, those with commercial and contractual matters to reflect on in relation to Brand have their own priorities too. Brand is not the only person to whom reputational damage can be done. Brand can go to court to defend his history in the libel courts and make millions in damages. (Will he?) Publicists, agents, theatres, internet thingys, publishers, MSM, all have images worth billions to protect.
To normal people being associated with Brand would always have been a damaging position to be in. The way people live lives is a free choice, but not free of consequence.
And just as you start to despair of Labour having any ambition at all they confirm they'll build the whole of HS2 and NPR (though I'll believe it when I see it).
I know "out of touch" is a cliche but the government really are coming across as very 1996/7 at the moment. Tired and out of ideas.
Their big opportunity in the near term is a poor Labour showing at the byelections. If the SNP keep Rutherglen and Tories retain Tamworth (quite possible) and Mid Beds (also quite possible) then we'll get a couple of weeks of Starmer in crisis to reset the media narrative. If Labour win 2 or 3 of those then it'll just pile on the pain. If Labour win Rutherglen and Tamworth and Lib Dems get Mid Beds with Labour second then the Tories will go into meltdown.
So that we know what to look out for - in what ways would the Tories in meltdown look different from what we are seeing now?
That's the brilliant psychological experiment that the mice are currently running.
Sunak looks like a loser. Different methodologies make it hard to compare, but he's doing about as badly as Major in '96. And he doesn't have the residual kudos for being an election winner in his own right. And Britain is not, as the slogan went, Booming, or showing any signs of preparing to boom.
Standard Operating Procedure here is change leader and hope. But for the reasons listed by @david_herdson upthread, that's not really an option. So all they can do is hang on and hope.
They clearly want to melt down, but they aren't allowed to. The sort of torture some people pay good money for. Apparently.
Meltdown to me means another 1922 committee palaver with the entire parliamentary party stabbing each other in the back. One thing they've sort of managed in the last year is a modicum of unity.
I think the final attempted regicide before the election is there, in the background. It may not happen or it may. A bit like the Prigozhin mutiny (and like that one, I think Sunak would see off the mutineers). Some of the early signs are there.
When it becomes clear that keeping him is more costly electorally than offing him, he'll go. His personal polling falling beneath that of the party would be a sign.
The trouble is there is no king or queen across the water. No Boris.
This is right. It isn't enough for Tory MPs to conclude that Sunak is a liability in that he slips to being less popular than his party (which isn't the case at the moment anyway on most polls).
They also need to think that the act of defenestration wouldn't in itself hurt them still further, and that the new leader they end up with would be better. The new leader has to be an MP, ruling out at least one person of note. Any vaguely capable contender would far rather be the shiny new Leader of the Opposition after an election than the hapless mug who got a shellacking after a handful of months at the helm so will be really hard to persuade to step up rather than wait a short time. That just leaves the howling mad and the terminally sh1t, who aren't an obvious improvement to say the least.
I just can't see it.
The only one is Penny. I'm a fan of the person, but not necessarily the policy agenda of Penny, but she's always been fairly cagey about that anyway.
I think Penny is the only one that Charles would have as PM without making an awful constitutional fuss. I can't see him happily installing Steve Barclay as PM, he'd demand a GE. Penny's sword carrying means he'd probably go with her as caretaker PM. I'd like Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda. I don't think the latter is guaranteed, possibly not even likely, but the very presence of a new leader would mean a shift in policy was demanded. Nobody wants a new leader to do a 'better' version of Sunakism.
Firstly, King Charles' views have absolutely nothing to do with it. He might or might not express a view in private audience with the new PM as to whether an election should be called promptly, but his constitutional duty is simply to appoint as PM whoever, due to being elected leader by the majority party, is the person able to command a majority in the House of Commons. If you think he'd do anything else, you're living in a fantasy world.
Secondly, Mordaunt is very unlikely to have any interest in being the sap who gets to be caretaker for a few months before a shellacking. I'm not 100% certain on this one as she sometimes makes eccentric moves (taking her bid against Sunak to the wire in leadership contest 2 for instance) but very unlikely.
Finally, "Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda" is just your own, personal fantasy and best left for you to enjoy in your private time.
I made quite clear that that was what I wanted rather than what I expected, not sure why the attempted 'zinger' was necessary.
I think Charles is more than capable of throwing a constitutional strop that derails a leadership takeover. He lacks QEII's propriety in that regard imo.
I am convinced Charles would have told Boris and Cummings he would not prorogue Parliament to try and get Brexit done, while the Queen was probably a Leaver, Charles would probably have been a Remainer had he been able to vote. See his first state visits as King were to Germany and France
I agree. And I really think he'd kick up a right Royal stink if the Tories replaced Sunak with a new leader now, *except* perhaps Penny Mordaunt, who played such a key role in his coronation.
No commentary here on the Sunak U-turn on net-zero plans for cars and boilers? Looks like a serious attempt at a reset for the Tories - and one I like. Can Labour go along with it? Could be Zugzwang for them
Rachel Wolf @racheljanetwolf · 3h I'm a bit worried Liz Truss is getting ready to run for leader again after the election. Is that a stupid worry?
Sam Freedman @Samfr · 1h On one hand I think she'd only get about 5 votes from other MPs. On the other hand that might be enough to get into the second round based on today's polls...
No commentary here on the Sunak U-turn on net-zero plans for cars and boilers? Looks like a serious attempt at a reset for the Tories - and one I like. Can Labour go along with it? Could be Zugzwang for them
I think pro net zero / green policies are more popular than you think. We can’t keep changing parameters because one option looks politically more advantageous.
And just as you start to despair of Labour having any ambition at all they confirm they'll build the whole of HS2 and NPR (though I'll believe it when I see it).
I know "out of touch" is a cliche but the government really are coming across as very 1996/7 at the moment. Tired and out of ideas.
Their big opportunity in the near term is a poor Labour showing at the byelections. If the SNP keep Rutherglen and Tories retain Tamworth (quite possible) and Mid Beds (also quite possible) then we'll get a couple of weeks of Starmer in crisis to reset the media narrative. If Labour win 2 or 3 of those then it'll just pile on the pain. If Labour win Rutherglen and Tamworth and Lib Dems get Mid Beds with Labour second then the Tories will go into meltdown.
So that we know what to look out for - in what ways would the Tories in meltdown look different from what we are seeing now?
That's the brilliant psychological experiment that the mice are currently running.
Sunak looks like a loser. Different methodologies make it hard to compare, but he's doing about as badly as Major in '96. And he doesn't have the residual kudos for being an election winner in his own right. And Britain is not, as the slogan went, Booming, or showing any signs of preparing to boom.
Standard Operating Procedure here is change leader and hope. But for the reasons listed by @david_herdson upthread, that's not really an option. So all they can do is hang on and hope.
They clearly want to melt down, but they aren't allowed to. The sort of torture some people pay good money for. Apparently.
Meltdown to me means another 1922 committee palaver with the entire parliamentary party stabbing each other in the back. One thing they've sort of managed in the last year is a modicum of unity.
I think the final attempted regicide before the election is there, in the background. It may not happen or it may. A bit like the Prigozhin mutiny (and like that one, I think Sunak would see off the mutineers). Some of the early signs are there.
When it becomes clear that keeping him is more costly electorally than offing him, he'll go. His personal polling falling beneath that of the party would be a sign.
The trouble is there is no king or queen across the water. No Boris.
This is right. It isn't enough for Tory MPs to conclude that Sunak is a liability in that he slips to being less popular than his party (which isn't the case at the moment anyway on most polls).
They also need to think that the act of defenestration wouldn't in itself hurt them still further, and that the new leader they end up with would be better. The new leader has to be an MP, ruling out at least one person of note. Any vaguely capable contender would far rather be the shiny new Leader of the Opposition after an election than the hapless mug who got a shellacking after a handful of months at the helm so will be really hard to persuade to step up rather than wait a short time. That just leaves the howling mad and the terminally sh1t, who aren't an obvious improvement to say the least.
I just can't see it.
The only one is Penny. I'm a fan of the person, but not necessarily the policy agenda of Penny, but she's always been fairly cagey about that anyway.
I think Penny is the only one that Charles would have as PM without making an awful constitutional fuss. I can't see him happily installing Steve Barclay as PM, he'd demand a GE. Penny's sword carrying means he'd probably go with her as caretaker PM. I'd like Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda. I don't think the latter is guaranteed, possibly not even likely, but the very presence of a new leader would mean a shift in policy was demanded. Nobody wants a new leader to do a 'better' version of Sunakism.
Firstly, King Charles' views have absolutely nothing to do with it. He might or might not express a view in private audience with the new PM as to whether an election should be called promptly, but his constitutional duty is simply to appoint as PM whoever, due to being elected leader by the majority party, is the person able to command a majority in the House of Commons. If you think he'd do anything else, you're living in a fantasy world.
Secondly, Mordaunt is very unlikely to have any interest in being the sap who gets to be caretaker for a few months before a shellacking. I'm not 100% certain on this one as she sometimes makes eccentric moves (taking her bid against Sunak to the wire in leadership contest 2 for instance) but very unlikely.
Finally, "Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda" is just your own, personal fantasy and best left for you to enjoy in your private time.
I made quite clear that that was what I wanted rather than what I expected, not sure why the attempted 'zinger' was necessary.
I think Charles is more than capable of throwing a constitutional strop that derails a leadership takeover. He lacks QEII's propriety in that regard imo.
I am convinced Charles would have told Boris and Cummings he would not prorogue Parliament to try and get Brexit done, while the Queen was probably a Leaver, Charles would probably have been a Remainer had he been able to vote. See his first state visits as King were to Germany and France
And his son and daughter-in-law weren’t that welcome in the Caribbean Commonwealth not long before the Coronation.
Most of the Caribbean Commonwealth are now republics or heading that way anyway
Most of the whole Commonwealth are now republics.
All the commonwealth will be shortly - it's inevitable
She has a point. Is it right to deprive someone of their entire livelihood on the basis of hearsay and anonymous allegations - made to the media not the police?
I suppose you could argue that Brand has the money to fight libel actions but it still doesn’t seem quite right
Maybe key word is 'suspends'?
@Cyclefree probably knows way more than us about this kind of corporate thing, but if there is some kind of allegation of a v serious nature in a workplace are people not sometimes 'suspended' pending an investigation?
If fhere is no court case, and no prosecution, will YouTube “desuspend” him? I rather doubt it, but if so fair enough
If they don’t then this is tantamount to trial and conviction by media and anonymous allegation, with the punishment being: end of career
Without the courts even being involved. That makes me deeply uneasy
And I don’t even stan Brand. He wasn't funny and he got far too much sex for my liking
Tons of entertainers have lost their rides - and often for stuff that isn’t especially bad. See Tiger Woods, mentioned above.
What laws did Lance Armstrong actually break?
The US False Claims Act, if you're asking.
Former professional cyclist Lance Armstrong agreed to pay the United States $5 million to resolve a lawsuit alleging that his admitted use of performance-enhancing drugs and methods (“PEDs”) resulted in the submission of millions of dollars in false claims for sponsorship payments to the U.S. Postal Service (“USPS”), which sponsored Armstrong’s cycling team during six of the seven years Armstrong appeared to have won the Tour de France, the Department of Justice announced today.
The interesting thing here is that Armstrong did this while racing for a team sponsored by a US federal agency (the USPS); and that under US law, whistleblowers get a percentage of the settlement. The whistleblower in this case was another pro cyclist, Floyd Landis. Landis used to race on the same team and was at least as dodgy as Armstrong... just less good at covering it up. But because he passed everything he knew onto the Department of Justice, he qualified as a whistleblower, and thereby earned $1.1m for being less good at cheating than Armstrong.
No commentary here on the Sunak U-turn on net-zero plans for cars and boilers? Looks like a serious attempt at a reset for the Tories - and one I like. Can Labour go along with it? Could be Zugzwang for them
Hopefully it becomes policy - I'll wait till it does.
And just as you start to despair of Labour having any ambition at all they confirm they'll build the whole of HS2 and NPR (though I'll believe it when I see it).
I know "out of touch" is a cliche but the government really are coming across as very 1996/7 at the moment. Tired and out of ideas.
Their big opportunity in the near term is a poor Labour showing at the byelections. If the SNP keep Rutherglen and Tories retain Tamworth (quite possible) and Mid Beds (also quite possible) then we'll get a couple of weeks of Starmer in crisis to reset the media narrative. If Labour win 2 or 3 of those then it'll just pile on the pain. If Labour win Rutherglen and Tamworth and Lib Dems get Mid Beds with Labour second then the Tories will go into meltdown.
So that we know what to look out for - in what ways would the Tories in meltdown look different from what we are seeing now?
That's the brilliant psychological experiment that the mice are currently running.
Sunak looks like a loser. Different methodologies make it hard to compare, but he's doing about as badly as Major in '96. And he doesn't have the residual kudos for being an election winner in his own right. And Britain is not, as the slogan went, Booming, or showing any signs of preparing to boom.
Standard Operating Procedure here is change leader and hope. But for the reasons listed by @david_herdson upthread, that's not really an option. So all they can do is hang on and hope.
They clearly want to melt down, but they aren't allowed to. The sort of torture some people pay good money for. Apparently.
Meltdown to me means another 1922 committee palaver with the entire parliamentary party stabbing each other in the back. One thing they've sort of managed in the last year is a modicum of unity.
I think the final attempted regicide before the election is there, in the background. It may not happen or it may. A bit like the Prigozhin mutiny (and like that one, I think Sunak would see off the mutineers). Some of the early signs are there.
When it becomes clear that keeping him is more costly electorally than offing him, he'll go. His personal polling falling beneath that of the party would be a sign.
The trouble is there is no king or queen across the water. No Boris.
This is right. It isn't enough for Tory MPs to conclude that Sunak is a liability in that he slips to being less popular than his party (which isn't the case at the moment anyway on most polls).
They also need to think that the act of defenestration wouldn't in itself hurt them still further, and that the new leader they end up with would be better. The new leader has to be an MP, ruling out at least one person of note. Any vaguely capable contender would far rather be the shiny new Leader of the Opposition after an election than the hapless mug who got a shellacking after a handful of months at the helm so will be really hard to persuade to step up rather than wait a short time. That just leaves the howling mad and the terminally sh1t, who aren't an obvious improvement to say the least.
I just can't see it.
The only one is Penny. I'm a fan of the person, but not necessarily the policy agenda of Penny, but she's always been fairly cagey about that anyway.
I think Penny is the only one that Charles would have as PM without making an awful constitutional fuss. I can't see him happily installing Steve Barclay as PM, he'd demand a GE. Penny's sword carrying means he'd probably go with her as caretaker PM. I'd like Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda. I don't think the latter is guaranteed, possibly not even likely, but the very presence of a new leader would mean a shift in policy was demanded. Nobody wants a new leader to do a 'better' version of Sunakism.
Firstly, King Charles' views have absolutely nothing to do with it. He might or might not express a view in private audience with the new PM as to whether an election should be called promptly, but his constitutional duty is simply to appoint as PM whoever, due to being elected leader by the majority party, is the person able to command a majority in the House of Commons. If you think he'd do anything else, you're living in a fantasy world.
Secondly, Mordaunt is very unlikely to have any interest in being the sap who gets to be caretaker for a few months before a shellacking. I'm not 100% certain on this one as she sometimes makes eccentric moves (taking her bid against Sunak to the wire in leadership contest 2 for instance) but very unlikely.
Finally, "Penny as the face, with a Trussite/Redwoodite agenda" is just your own, personal fantasy and best left for you to enjoy in your private time.
I made quite clear that that was what I wanted rather than what I expected, not sure why the attempted 'zinger' was necessary.
I think Charles is more than capable of throwing a constitutional strop that derails a leadership takeover. He lacks QEII's propriety in that regard imo.
I am convinced Charles would have told Boris and Cummings he would not prorogue Parliament to try and get Brexit done, while the Queen was probably a Leaver, Charles would probably have been a Remainer had he been able to vote. See his first state visits as King were to Germany and France
And his son and daughter-in-law weren’t that welcome in the Caribbean Commonwealth not long before the Coronation.
Most of the Caribbean Commonwealth are now republics or heading that way anyway
Most of the whole Commonwealth are now republics.
All the commonwealth will be shortly - it's inevitable
No it isn't, certainly not in the white majority largely British Isles origin Australia, Canada and New Zealand, even if it is and largely already is in non white majority Commonwealth nations.
Indeed on current polls Australians may even reject a Voice for Aborigines to their Parliament in the referendum next month
No commentary here on the Sunak U-turn on net-zero plans for cars and boilers? Looks like a serious attempt at a reset for the Tories - and one I like. Can Labour go along with it? Could be Zugzwang for them
I think pro net zero / green policies are more popular than you think. We can’t keep changing parameters because one option looks politically more advantageous.
If Germany isn't doing it, why would we commit economical suicide by doing it?
Not exactly Paris but big enough to have life. Especially at 7pm on a balmy weekday evening
This is one of the main roads, in the centre, right now
They’ve all taken small boats to England.
I’ve found the tourist centre. Even here…
Provincial France feels notably “recessiony” to me
Certainly compared with Kent and Oxford which were both bouncing over the last fortnight, even with the schools back.
I was in Maidenhead today. Centre of the affluent blue wall.
Desolate.
I used to rent a room there when I was working for a firm in the area. Very nice place, sympathetically redeveloped about a decade or two ago. One of those little jewels along the (I think) Thames Valley. At the time it was marginally affordable by ordinary people, but not any more. The only disfiguring issue is a gentlemen's club (in the Spearmint Rhino sense, not gay) near the station, but not as bad as say Tonbridge which has/had a sex shop opposite the station entrance. If Maidenhead is suffering things have got bad.
She has a point. Is it right to deprive someone of their entire livelihood on the basis of hearsay and anonymous allegations - made to the media not the police?
I suppose you could argue that Brand has the money to fight libel actions but it still doesn’t seem quite right
The reason "talent" can make loadsamoney is free market economics. It has nothing to do with fairness. A key cog in free market economics is companies can let you go, subject to contract, when you are a known liability.
Its only free market for commercial firms.
For the BBC its not market as the revenue isn't being raised on the market.
She has a point. Is it right to deprive someone of their entire livelihood on the basis of hearsay and anonymous allegations - made to the media not the police?
I suppose you could argue that Brand has the money to fight libel actions but it still doesn’t seem quite right
Maybe key word is 'suspends'?
@Cyclefree probably knows way more than us about this kind of corporate thing, but if there is some kind of allegation of a v serious nature in a workplace are people not sometimes 'suspended' pending an investigation?
If fhere is no court case, and no prosecution, will YouTube “desuspend” him? I rather doubt it, but if so fair enough
If they don’t then this is tantamount to trial and conviction by media and anonymous allegation, with the punishment being: end of career
Without the courts even being involved. That makes me deeply uneasy
And I don’t even stan Brand. He wasn't funny and he got far too much sex for my liking
Tons of entertainers have lost their rides - and often for stuff that isn’t especially bad. See Tiger Woods, mentioned above.
What laws did Lance Armstrong actually break?
The US False Claims Act, if you're asking.
Former professional cyclist Lance Armstrong agreed to pay the United States $5 million to resolve a lawsuit alleging that his admitted use of performance-enhancing drugs and methods (“PEDs”) resulted in the submission of millions of dollars in false claims for sponsorship payments to the U.S. Postal Service (“USPS”), which sponsored Armstrong’s cycling team during six of the seven years Armstrong appeared to have won the Tour de France, the Department of Justice announced today.
The interesting thing here is that Armstrong did this while racing for a team sponsored by a US federal agency (the USPS); and that under US law, whistleblowers get a percentage of the settlement. The whistleblower in this case was another pro cyclist, Floyd Landis. Landis used to race on the same team and was at least as dodgy as Armstrong... just less good at covering it up. But because he passed everything he knew onto the Department of Justice, he qualified as a whistleblower, and thereby earned $1.1m for being less good at cheating than Armstrong.
Yup - but that was long after everyone involved had lost their sponsorships. Armstrong was in serious financial difficulty by the time he was taken to court.
Comments
"Costly efforts to install the Oracle ERP financial reporting software on Birmingham council's IT systems were also blamed for the local authority's financial state.
The failed bid saw Birmingham City Council forced to spend £46.53million to fix 'urgent' issues with its IT systems in June 2023, as it estimated the total cost of overhauling the system would be in the region of £100million."
(Daily Mail)
WTF?
How is this possible? That is a colossal figure.
That travesty was compounded by failing to appoint a genuine Brexiteer as PM in his place.
They have never recovered from those two disasters.
Good to see you back anyway.
It's the people who now back him knowing what we know now that worry me.
The past contracts of wind aren't being resigned, or offered. They were there to kickstart the industry.
The 'past' price of already signed future prices are already lower than gas.
Bravo.
The other truth is the Conservative Party has survived for so long because it has the ability to re-invent itself to fit the spirit of the time. The past is ruthlessly jettisoned to create a present and a future which amounts to electability - that happens sooner or later.
That process starts when the Party recognises the mistakes it made last time in office either via a public mea culpa or privately by recognising self-indulgence in opposition keeps you in opposition and the way back to power starts by recognising the world has moved on.
Thurrock was the big bet at 16/1, it was 4/5 on election day and they lost by 300 votes. I wouldn’t want to be laying bets like that too often.
Elon Musk has indicated that X, formerly known as Twitter, is considering charging all users for accessing the platform.
The X owner said erecting a paywall around the business would ward off the bots, or automated accounts, that have become a bugbear for Musk.
Speaking in a meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, the Tesla CEO and world’s richest person suggested that X was going to charge its user base. Currently, Twitter only charges users for its subscription service X Premium, which offers perks such as a verified account checkmark and costs $11 a month in the US for iPhones and £11 in the UK.
“We’re moving to having a small monthly payment for use of the system,” Musk said.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/19/elon-musk-twitter-x-subscription-fees-users-posts
Ofgem pays to ensure that the energy grid is stable and reliable, and that it doesn't get damaged by too much or too little supply or demand. That makes perfect sense contrary to your BS website's claims.
In case you missed it, Ofgem also makes similar payments to carbon based power plants. £395 million was paid out last year to coal power plants which weren't operating.
Ofgem needs to invest in boosting capacity, which it is doing. Once everyone is powering their cars based on variable supply the supply will have somewhere to go, but the capacity isn't there yet.
The big factor making it pretty unlikely in my view, though, is that there is no sign of the party splitting, nor of an alternative occupant of their political lane making real progress (Farage sometimes makes a noise and is an irritant to the Tories but doesn't really look to be mobilising in a serious way to win seats and grab a very large vote).
The Liberals had both of these in 1918 - a major party split between Lloyd-George's Coalition Liberals and Asquith's continuing Liberals, plus a serious and growing Labour Party in their broadly progressive lane.
Whether it could get worse for the Tories after defeat with those elements coming in - possibly, and you're right we shouldn't assume they will always be there. But it feels unlikely to be a pre-2025 thing due to lack of a split and of a strong emerging contender in their lane.
I once did a photography course with an English ex-pat in the Tarn region and we spent a day in Albi.
I remember tall buildings hunched right up against the river.
Tarn region was a beautiful and seemingly rather undiscovered corner of rural france iirc.
I think Charles is more than capable of throwing a constitutional strop that derails a leadership takeover. He lacks QEII's propriety in that regard imo.
We are at the point now none of the major Tory leadership contenders, Braverman, Badenoch, Mordaunt, Barclay, Tugendhat etc have much interest in taking over now. They will let Sunak and Hunt lose the next election and then put their stalls forward to be Leader of the Opposition
He compares this with Rory Stewart who is correct in every respect but completely failed to do the necessary low and cunning centrist politics.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/james-o-brien-and-the-other-vip-child-sex-abuse-lies/
But I was here ten years ago and I remember the
centre being bustling and lively. Not now
It would equally take RefUK overtaking the Tories as the main party of the right for the Tories to be near wiped out. That was a possibility in May and June 2019 when the Brexit Party had overtaken the Tories in some polls after May failed to get Brexit done, it is not likely now
They finally had the state sponsored coverup of child abuse - but it wasn’t the one they wanted.
More than anyone else I can think of in public life she knew how to stay silent about what she did. Maybe our great grandchildren will be able to read all about it when the Peter Hennesseys of 2100 write it up from the sources.
“So YouTube suspends Russell Brand from making money on its platform.
His live shows have been indefinitely postponed and refunds offered.
His body of work on Channel4 has been scrubbed.
And yet there is not even an arrest or an interview under caution.
THIS is cancel culture. “
https://x.com/therealmissjo/status/1704041193456156907?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw
She has a point. Is it right to deprive someone of their entire livelihood on the basis of hearsay and anonymous allegations - made to the media not the police?
I suppose you could argue that Brand has the money to fight libel actions but it still doesn’t seem quite right
Genuflecting to the Mail and Express. Going with a core vote strategy. Looking at today's polls, that strategy is succeeding.
And we've still got the resurrection of The Truss to filter through into voting intention.
The Conservatives deserve to be eviscerated.
So only if the Tories are seen as the centrist party will they be wiped out.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/07/revealed-queen-lobbied-for-change-in-law-to-hide-her-private-wealth#:~:text=Evidence of the monarch's lobbying,the formation of British laws.
What I find funny about the Renewable Energy Foundation's piece is that it deliberately excludes one of the main reasons why these payments exist:
Nuclear.
When the wind is blowing, the grid needs to turn off power supplies. With gas, that's dead easy. (Please turn off your OCGT/CCGT.) With coal, it's a bit harder, and suppliers will happily have negative prices for a bit rather than put plants through thermal contraction/expansion cycles.
With nuclear, they aren't lowering that output with less than 24 hours notice. Unless you're writing a very big cheque.
Which means that the grid is now looking for the cheapest way to get power production below power demand. And the cheapest way is usually to pay for wind turbines to be disconnected.
But this raises an important question: why is it the fault of wind that nuclear is highly inflexible? Why should the UK government be susbsidising new nuclear at 2x the price of wind, when having it as part of the mix inevitably means having to pay wind not to produce?
There's a second important factor. New windfarms have been built in places with inadequate takeaway capacity. In the old days (pre-2012), it was because permitting took no notice of the need to carry wind energy. But these days, almost everything built has been built because transmission capacity has been promised. And, indeed, that transmission capacity has often been paid for by the wind developers themselves.
If National Grid and Ofgem have failed to deliver contractually obliged takeaway capacity, why is that the fault of the wind developer?
Wind is economic in the UK. Indeed, it is highly economic.
Yes, it needs gas backup, but the capital and maintenance costs of a modern CCGT are miniscule, while it is the fuel that is expensive.
@Cyclefree probably knows way more than us about this kind of corporate thing, but if there is some kind of allegation of a v serious nature in a workplace are people not sometimes 'suspended' pending an investigation?
But, in his game, I think he is at the mercy of the market - he has been overpaid in relation to his talent for two decades on the back of the media fawning over him, now the tide seems to have turned, even if he turns out to be just a sexual bully rather than a criminal
It's a must-see.
Tiger Woods lost zillions in sponsorships for behaviour which wasn’t on the level of Brands - cheating on his wife with various er… professionals, mainly.
There is no way he could plausibly remain PM after June 2016; he had recommended one course of action to the British population, and they voted against it. It wasn't technically a vote of confidence, but it had the same weight.
Besides, Cameron would (presumably) have negotiated an arrangement closer to the EU than May's or Johnson's. Given the buckets of shit poured on May, is it really plausible to think that Cameron negotiating something would have ended better?
If they don’t then this is tantamount to trial and conviction by media and anonymous allegation, with the punishment being: end of career
Without the courts even being involved. That makes me deeply uneasy
And I don’t even stan Brand. He wasn't funny and he got far too much sex for my liking
So Brand has nothing to whine about. If you are in the entertainment business, your image can affect others. So it matters. “But it’s legal” doesn’t work for that.
Guardian
Macron's En Marche perhaps a rare exception but then he was helped by division between multiple parties in the first round and then facing the far right in the run off
What laws did Lance Armstrong actually break?
If you are in entertainment, you need to be better than “it’s all legal”. It needs to be “my reputation is not a negative for my sponsors.”
Honestly we are so spoiled in Europe. There is so much to see and do everywhere - certainly in England France and Italy, and to an extent in Spain Portugal Greece and Germany
And Switzerland. Even Belgium has stuff. And Holland
In fact the only shit place in western or southern Europe is Denmark
He shouldn’t have taken a prominent role in the referendum, so he could still have been PM no matter what. But even given the way it panned out, he should have hung around to make a deal as he said he would.
By the way, I hear Aklu Plaza is closing. They couldn’t get permission for the ‘banqueting suite/community space/wedding venue’ on the third floor in time, and the ‘shop’ downstairs was a rat infested front
Weirdly, because you spend most of your time on Twitter and I live on YouTube, this might be the only time ever where I am ahead of the curve zeitgeist. Does the Knappers Gazette need a YouTube correspondent?
Suspending YouTube income if held for him to be repaid if he was shown not to be guilty seems okay. But scrubbing content from Channel 4 seems way out of line. And should we not give individuals the choice as to whether they want to spend money and time at his shows?
I think the man is a money-grabbing turd these days, but I think we play into the hands of those stoking a culture war by reacting this way.
ETA: just to be clear, I suspect the allegations are probably true and then most/all of these things should happen. But there needs to be a sequence to this stuff imo
And yet it is also an invitation to any malefactor to destroy a public figure they don’t like by merely gathering some “anonymous accounts” and splashing them all over the media
You never have to stand them up in court. You never have to prove anything. You can destroy someone by innuendo. smear and anonymous denunciation
Do we really want to applaud that?
Of course backing down now will see the public asking why didn’t you settle earlier .
(I recognise the hypocrisy of me writing this on an iPhone I spend far too much time on).
Likewise the 16 year old girlfriend. She claims sexual assault
SO GO TO THE POLICE
Enough of this anonymous denouncing. Even in court their identities will be disguised. So what are they afraid of? Brand is not gonna send the mafia after them
Rachel Wolf
@racheljanetwolf
·
3h
I'm a bit worried Liz Truss is getting ready to run for leader again after the election. Is that a stupid worry?
Sam Freedman
@Samfr
·
1h
On one hand I think she'd only get about 5 votes from other MPs. On the other hand that might be enough to get into the second round based on today's polls...
https://twitter.com/Samfr
They very specifically did not advise her to prorogue Parliament to enable them to "get Brexit done" and indeed actively concealed the true purpose of preventing Parliament from being able to legislate to block a no deal Brexit. The advice given on behalf of the PM to the Queen was that it was a prorogation in line with any other, at the end of a long Parliamentary session to prepare a new legislative agenda. That was untrue, and she might have questioned its veracity itself, but it's beyond unprecedented for the Monarch to say "I'm not following the PM's advice because he's a liar" - that is massive constitutional crisis time.
We don't know what the Queen (or King now) would have done had they been advised to prorogue on the novel (and highly dubious) basis that it was a clever wheeze to help them "get Brexit done" because that simply wasn't the advice.
Indeed, when it went to court, a very notable aspect is the Government simply offered no evidence on the reason for prorogation, relying solely on an argument that the question was not justiciable. The only possible reason for that was that to do so would involve the Government minister (or PM) committing perjury by repeating the lie told to the Queen (and if they'd given the true reason, they'd be admitting lying to the Queen, which would likely invalidate the prorogation anyway).
That whole, rather complex, story was drowned out by shouts of "Get Brexit Done!" and "Bollocks to Brexit!" But it's a very squalid tale wherever you are on that debate. The Queen was directly misled by the PM such that her only options were to illegally (as it turns out) prorogue Parliament, or to call him a liar directly and provoke an even more major crisis. It was appalling, and I can only hope she had a brief smile when the same character trait as he'd so brazenly exhibited to her also caused his downfall, meaning that she was able to accept his resignation as her penultimate official duty as Monarch.
Plus on the free market argument it can work both ways. Performers can argue ‘I need this astronomical amount because I might get cancelled tomorrow’.
Though Leon misses the point a bit too about going to court, because rape conviction rates are so woefully low.
Secondly people who promote themselves by an image of amoral selfishness run the risk of being demoted by the less attractive side of that character. He is, in a free society, free to make lots of money from bad books and talentless chuntering. The public are equally free to switch off.
Thirdly, those with commercial and contractual matters to reflect on in relation to Brand have their own priorities too. Brand is not the only person to whom reputational damage can be done. Brand can go to court to defend his history in the libel courts and make millions in damages. (Will he?) Publicists, agents, theatres, internet thingys, publishers, MSM, all have images worth billions to protect.
To normal people being associated with Brand would always have been a damaging position to be in. The way people live lives is a free choice, but not free of consequence.
Desolate.
The interesting thing here is that Armstrong did this while racing for a team sponsored by a US federal agency (the USPS); and that under US law, whistleblowers get a percentage of the settlement. The whistleblower in this case was another pro cyclist, Floyd Landis. Landis used to race on the same team and was at least as dodgy as Armstrong... just less good at covering it up. But because he passed everything he knew onto the Department of Justice, he qualified as a whistleblower, and thereby earned $1.1m for being less good at cheating than Armstrong.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/lance-armstrong-agrees-pay-5-million-settle-false-claims-allegations-arising-violation-anti
Indeed on current polls Australians may even reject a Voice for Aborigines to their Parliament in the referendum next month
For the BBC its not market as the revenue isn't being raised on the market.
If I have ever said anything midly positive about Sunak I wish to now retract those comments, he's a short-arsed berk who hasn't got a clue.
"He is also expected to rule out proposed recycling schemes with multiple bins."
It's gone full-on Cones Hotline, hasn't it? This is basically Government by Alan Partridge.