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Tonight’s Sunak own goal? Blocking the Manchester HS2 link this week – politicalbetting.com
Tonight’s Sunak own goal? Blocking the Manchester HS2 link this week – politicalbetting.com
In just 6 days Tory representatives from all over the UK will be gathering in Manchester for their annual conference.
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How much are these comms strategists paid?
https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1706337765703684379?t=9Vmt_yQzWwfG7fJ4SQZcIA&s=19
Labour leads by 15% nationally.
Westminster VI (24 September):
Labour 43% (-1)
Conservative 28% (+2)
Liberal Democrat 13% (-1)
Reform UK 8% (+2)
Green 5% (-1)
Scottish National Party 2% (-1)
Other 1% (–)
Changes +/- 17 September
https://x.com/redfieldwilton/status/1706337765703684379?s=46I
Don't get me wrong - I'm very cross about this (assuming it is cancelled - it may still not be). But it would have looked worse doing it from the south.
I half suspect that it will still go ahead, and that this is a tactic to make the planned Piccadilly HS2 station seem like a triumph rather than a bodged job which would never be accepted in the south, and to try to make Mancunian asks for an underground station* seem churlish. "Of course you can have HS2. Now shut up about Piccadilly."
*because basically the benefits from doing so would outweigh the costs. Not just because we want a station underground.
Ref clearly not on 8% so we can probably add 6 of that to the Tory score.
(I don’t think LDs are on 13% either)
@peterbakernyt
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2h
Candidates running for House and Senate increased spending on security by more than 500% between the 2020 and 2022 elections, a measure of the extraordinary rise in threats against elected officials in recent years.
@Invisibae
@MariannaReports
@cdechalus
https://twitter.com/peterbakernyt/status/1706295310794793308
Voted Tory - and donated wads of cash - for the last three decades. Now a floating voter.
Thinks abandoning HS2 now is nuts.
We have all been turned into cloud-serfs
BY YANIS VAROUFAKIS"
https://unherd.com/2023/09/capitalism-is-dead-long-live-technofeudalism/
Who would ever invest in UK infra again?
Starmer vs Sunak (24 September):
Starmer leads Sunak on 16 of 17 leadership characteristics polled, including:
Cares about people like me (42% | 27%)
Is a strong leader (39% | 29%)
Understands the problems afflicting UK (42% | 32%)
Can build a strong economy (40% | 36%)
Rishi Antoinette
I fully expect the very suboptimal surface station to be the proposed solution to this when it's clear to anyone interested the underground station offers far better connections across the north.
Many underground stations were built for Xrail, heaven forbid one in the north.
"I'm travelling to Old Oak Common, which my Bradshaw's guide tells me is nowhere near where I want to get to."
If we could persuade KC3 to just invite all of the transport ministers for the last 15 years to spend a little time in the Tower then we'd get to the bottom of the matter.
I mean, I'm wavering anyway. They're crap of the issues I care about. Their only saving grace is that on most of the issues I care about Labour are worse. But on this issue Labour are miles ahead.
Anyway, without wanting to come over all Heathener, this was pretty much the #1 topic of conversation in my (Manchester) office today. Everyone wants HS2 (or keeps their opinion to themselves - some issues can have views which are unacceptable to a certain audience, though I don't think that is the case to any great extent with infrastructure.) But people weren't even angry - just wearily dismissive. No one cares what the Tories think any more - it's as if they've already left office.
October begins this Sunday. Ushered in across South Western France by temperatures on the 1st and 2nd up to 35C. (Spain and Portugal may manage 36C).
France’s October record is 32C set in Ploumanac’h (of all places) in 2011 on the same day we got 29.9C here. October 2022 was of course the warmest October on record in France, and in Europe as a whole.
We simply do not know just how popular or unpopular delaying or cancelling HS2 is nor the explanation behind it
It is possible he makes a case that he wants to spend the savings on much improved northern rail links, and invests in new hospitals and even schools
I am neutral on this pending the details, which most likely will be in the Autumn statement in November
The Tories have behaved like fools, ever since 2015. They’ve only got themselves to blame.
He should never have taken the job.
"On June 14, 2017, a mass shooting occurred during a practice session for the annual Congressional Baseball Game in Alexandria, Virginia, where six people were shot, including U.S. House Majority Whip, now U.S. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, U.S. Capitol Police officer Crystal Griner, congressional aide Zack Barth, and lobbyist Matt Mika, by 66-year-old James Hodgkinson. A ten-minute shootout took place between Hodgkinson and officers from the Capitol and Alexandria Police before officers shot Hodgkinson, who died from his wounds later that day at the George Washington University Hospital.[7][8] Scalise and Mika were taken to nearby hospitals where they underwent surgery.[9]
Hodgkinson was a left-wing activist with a record of domestic violence from Belleville, Illinois,[10][11] while Scalise was a Republican Party member of Congress."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_baseball_shooting
Hodgkinson had volunteered for Bernie Sanders, who immediately condemned the attack.
(Correct me if I am wrong, but I seem to recall that two members of the House of Commons have been murdered in recent years, one from each major party.)
The only difference is that tunnelling and excavation is much more expensive in the south because in Manchester (and much of the north) we are on what are termed 'competent' rocks (i.e. Sherwood Sandstone) rather than the more technically challenging muds and silts of London.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SmmMXdQ9qw&ab_channel=HouseofLords
Fluent, cogent and eminently sensible.
For all the criticism of Joe Biden running for office at 80, I am increasingly of the view that handing government over to the oldies is not the worst thing we could do.
I'd rather have a nonagenerian Hezza running the show than any of the current lot in office, or opposition.
I always said Starmer would be a rubbish PM, and so he is.
Am I getting this right?
That will give them something positive to announce in Manchester - after all, it's Phase 2b that opens up the potential benefits of Northern Powerhouse Rail (though, to be clear, NPR hasn't been funded, and probably never will be).
It'll also let them defy expectations, and might even serve to cheer up restive Red Wall MPs... they've long argued for Phase 2b to be built first, so it could be spun as meeting them halfway on that. And zapping Euston gives them a potential wedge issue with Labour - "North London lefties are wanting to spend yet more billions in their own area!"
The downside is that Phase 2a would be by far the cheapest section to build, so cutting it will save naff all. And what remains of Phase 1 will be left as a humongous white elephant. £40bn already spent, enabling empty trains to hurtle from Acton to Aston through gold-plated tunnels under the Cotswolds with a Benefit Cost Ratio approaching 0.
It'll be a horrifically expensive way a very minor political victory, and would be a more cynical move than anything Brown ever did as PM. Perfectly on-brand for Sunak, then.
@AntonSpisak
Slovakia, a small central European country and EU member, is facing a parliamentary election this week. It might be one of the most consequential elections in the country’s 30-year history, with ramifications for the EU, Ukraine and the West. A thread:
https://twitter.com/AntonSpisak/status/1706220915510395213
Indeed more voters in every UK region except London oppose HS2 than support it
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/trackers/support-for-high-speed-rail-hs2?crossBreak=north
Socialism XXIII or something.
I mean surely nobody is that credulous?
I don't have any polling but am 99% confident the latter would be even less popular than the former.
Recommended, if ever you are heading that way.
Tomorrow, the boring bit, across the vast emptiness that is rural France.
https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1706355381843398860?t=bzqkYJzI1K8PO5HtfKNYLA&s=19
He wasn't sure it ought to have gone ahead in the first place, but thought gutting it now was bonkers.
Set against that, they'll torpedo any investment in Sizewell C, so will need to find £20bn from elsewhere if they want to proceed.
Still, it's got us to stop talking about crumbling schools, the overwhelmed health service, and all those small boats that have singularly failed to stop coming.
Such passive provision is kinda the thing I'm in favour of.
The future course of our country’s history has been changed for no reason other than to enable a narcissist to achieve the position he coveted since childhood; which once he got he proved entirely unfit for and clueless as to what to do with. Things don’t come more damaging than that.
19% support a permanent 10pm curfew......
We live in a gerontocracy and they have to get out the vote.....
https://mixmag.net/read/nightclubs-permanently-closed-poll-ipsos-mori-curfew-lockdown-
Boris doesn't really feature in the list in my view.
Yes it was cynical s***, but so was Brexit and that worked for Johnson.
He did good work with Docklands, and in Liverpool.
He was instrumental in persuading Thatcher to adopt the council house right to buy policy - and had he been listened to, we might have avoided its deeply malign effects on both local government finance, and our housing stock:
"...At the time Heseltine permitted councils to use up to 75% of sales receipts for renovating the housing stock, and was angry in later years when this was cut back by the Treasury..."
He was also pretty effective at managing his departments - a skill which seems beyond most ministers these days.
In a government other than Thatcher's, with whom he was constantly at loggerheads, and who denied him senior cabinet posts, he might have achieved a great deal more.
Never smoked, and don't care, but it smells like socialism to me.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/macron-rules-out-ban-on-gas-boilers-and-attacks-climate-alarmism/ar-AA1hexqt?cvid=f84156205ec443fad5b9d4840839cfca&ocid=winp2fptaskbarhover&ei=14
And at the same time directs various extremists, who really belong in fringe parties with handfuls of MPs, into the main parties where they lurk and await their chance to pull our politics out toward the fringes.
...during a Fox News interview w/ Brian Kilmeade, former president of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko denounces Victor Shokin, who plays as a leading role in Kilmeade's conspiracy theories, as a "completely crazy person" & says "there's something wrong with him" as Kilmeade melts
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1706337323565142473
And yes, as a youth I smoked. Gave up 60+ years ago!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07l40r1
The tobacco giants are speed running through Africa and Asia yet promising smoke free futures in the west. Complete bastards.
They are pragmatists, but clear centre right pragmatists.
I'd slightly quibble with the idea Thatcher was that much of an impediment to his career overall. He was influential and highly rated by Thatcher in the early years - he wasn't like Jim Prior, Ian Gilmour or John Nott, who were people Thatcher needed to tolerate for a while before easing them out. Clearly, they fell out over Westland and he had four years in the wilderness... but he was the one who made the tactical decision to storm out of Cabinet, and then he was back with a bang for seven years right at the heart of Major's Government.