50:50 abolish minimum wage/national parks I reckon.
National parks would be more likely - he doesn't want to touch anything close to actual economics.
Since he's concentrating on absolute trivia, perhaps there might be something around dogshit? Funding a national squad of Dogshit Detectives to go after people who don't pick up after their pets?
Or go the other way and appeal to boomer nostalgia: vote Tory to bring back white dogshit.
Compulsory DNA sampling of all dugs enabling testing of dug shite to track down the errant owners. Doubling as Bully XL and XXL register.
50:50 abolish minimum wage/national parks I reckon.
National parks would be more likely - he doesn't want to touch anything close to actual economics.
Since he's concentrating on absolute trivia, perhaps there might be something around dogshit? Funding a national squad of Dogshit Detectives to go after people who don't pick up after their pets?
Or go the other way and appeal to boomer nostalgia: vote Tory to bring back white dogshit.
I must admit I was amused by the concept of Sunak making hard decisions.
But I think it's going to be pretty hard for him to carry on coming up with a dog-whistle gimmick a week between now and the election - whenever it is.
50:50 abolish minimum wage/national parks I reckon.
National parks would be more likely - he doesn't want to touch anything close to actual economics.
Since he's concentrating on absolute trivia, perhaps there might be something around dogshit? Funding a national squad of Dogshit Detectives to go after people who don't pick up after their pets?
Or go the other way and appeal to boomer nostalgia: vote Tory to bring back white dogshit.
Compulsory DNA sampling of all dugs enabling testing of dug shite to track down the errant owners. Doubling as Bully XL and XXL register.
50:50 abolish minimum wage/national parks I reckon.
National parks would be more likely - he doesn't want to touch anything close to actual economics.
Since he's concentrating on absolute trivia, perhaps there might be something around dogshit? Funding a national squad of Dogshit Detectives to go after people who don't pick up after their pets?
Or go the other way and appeal to boomer nostalgia: vote Tory to bring back white dogshit.
Compulsory DNA sampling of all dugs enabling testing of dug shite to track down the errant owners. Doubling as Bully XL and XXL register.
Also earmarking of Pakistani dogs for deportation by the Home Secretary?
50:50 abolish minimum wage/national parks I reckon.
I love how those things are comparable in your eyes.
If Sir Keir Starmer is smart he could gain a march on Sunak and be MORE pro motorist than Sunak.
Driving is more important for hard stretched working families and swing voters who can't chill at home then go out for the day on a bus pass.
Starmer could point to Sunak and the Tories neglect of investment in our roads and pledge to do more, invest more.
You've misunderstood - I think they are equal chance of being the next gammon-bait topic, not equating their intrinsic value to the nation.
You also misunderstood earlier about my long post about the pro-motorist policy. I wasn't arguing the points, just laying out the various uncertainties over why it may or may not be successful for picking up more votes.
Yes your two proposals would be gammony, but next implies anything has happened that is gammony.
Do you think that being pro-motorist (which I don't think Sunak is being, if he was we'd have some investment and cut taxes on motoring) is "gammon-bait"?
Do you think the two thirds of people who commute to work by car, or the countless stretched parents who seek to drop kids off at school by car then be at work themselves, etc, are all gammons?
50:50 abolish minimum wage/national parks I reckon.
National parks would be more likely - he doesn't want to touch anything close to actual economics.
Since he's concentrating on absolute trivia, perhaps there might be something around dogshit? Funding a national squad of Dogshit Detectives to go after people who don't pick up after their pets?
Or go the other way and appeal to boomer nostalgia: vote Tory to bring back white dogshit.
I must admit I was amused by the concept of Sunak making hard decisions.
But I think it's going to be pretty hard for him to carry on coming up with a dog-whistle gimmick a week between now and the election - whenever it is.
The "inaction man" line really stung.
Starmer is just sitting back and watching him writhe.
I think we should agree what 'Labour landslide' means so that punditry can be properly evaluated against the outcome.
For me it means an overall majority of 75 or higher.
For me it's a hundred or more. Blair 2005 at 66 seats was not described as a landslide, Boris 2019 at 80 seats was described as a landslide, so your defn may be the popular one.
Still wrong, tho... 😀
Back in the real world Sir K will probably be under an overall majority, and will hope he only needs LD support and not SNP etc as well.
The Tories lose control of events is they lose 40+ seats. Labour need 123 for a majority. The boggy middle ground is huge. I think there is a 60+% we will be in that area.
Keeping the maths ridiculously simple, if Labour gain 45 seats form the Tories and no other change, the Tories lose control of events (320 seats) but Labour have only 247 seats. This would be fascinating, and some such picture is not impossible.
In that case the DUP becomes important again. A pity. However a few more non-Tory seats and they’ll return to the anonymity they deserve. Trouble is, of course, that Labour will have to rely on a rainbow coalition of support.
Yes. The most interesting element of the 2024 election is how few seats the Tories have to lose to lose control, and how few Labour have to win to have a decent prospect of gaining control.
The Tories lose control, though not all hope, if they lose 41 seats - making them 324. They almost certainly lose all hope if they lose 51 seats, making them 314.
They can lose this number by losing 20 to the LDs and 31 to Labour. Labour then have 233 seats, Tories have 314 and SFAICS Labour would lead the (extremely rainbow) government.
This starkly contrasts with the 123 seats Labour need for an absolute majority.
All my figures can be out by one or two, but the principle remains.
Those weak coalition numbers where Labour has fewer than 300 seats, and the Tories around the same, must keep Starmer up at night. Given the country’s underlying issues, winning the next election (and even lasting five years) would be hard.
Yes. There is no prospect of political interest slackening.
Kids, if you want to know what to get your dad for Christmas...
While we’re discussing Taiwan’s first domestically manufactured submarine today, let’s not forget to include in our discussion the commemorative liquor produced for the submarine program to date https://twitter.com/brianhioe/status/1707302133115297922
I think we should agree what 'Labour landslide' means so that punditry can be properly evaluated against the outcome.
For me it means an overall majority of 75 or higher.
For me it's a hundred or more. Blair 2005 at 66 seats was not described as a landslide, Boris 2019 at 80 seats was described as a landslide, so your defn may be the popular one.
Still wrong, tho... 😀
Back in the real world Sir K will probably be under an overall majority, and will hope he only needs LD support and not SNP etc as well.
The Tories lose control of events is they lose 40+ seats. Labour need 123 for a majority. The boggy middle ground is huge. I think there is a 60+% we will be in that area.
Keeping the maths ridiculously simple, if Labour gain 45 seats form the Tories and no other change, the Tories lose control of events (320 seats) but Labour have only 247 seats. This would be fascinating, and some such picture is not impossible.
In that case the DUP becomes important again. A pity. However a few more non-Tory seats and they’ll return to the anonymity they deserve. Trouble is, of course, that Labour will have to rely on a rainbow coalition of support.
I think all this talk of Labour failing to get an overall majority is just Tory wishful thinking. The Tories aren't the natural governing party. In the last 30 years, with the exception of the 'Brexit' election that many people are making the mistake of taking as a baseline, the Tories have won only one parliamentary majority.
Cherry picking alert! Change that 30 years to 32 years and you double the number of Tory parliamentry majorities excuding the (second) "Brexit Election".
50:50 abolish minimum wage/national parks I reckon.
National parks would be more likely - he doesn't want to touch anything close to actual economics.
Since he's concentrating on absolute trivia, perhaps there might be something around dogshit? Funding a national squad of Dogshit Detectives to go after people who don't pick up after their pets?
Or go the other way and appeal to boomer nostalgia: vote Tory to bring back white dogshit.
I must admit I was amused by the concept of Sunak making hard decisions.
But I think it's going to be pretty hard for him to carry on coming up with a dog-whistle gimmick a week between now and the election - whenever it is.
The "inaction man" line really stung.
Starmer is just sitting back and watching him writhe.
Hmmm. I assume that was PMQs? I follow politics (I post here after all) but hadn’t heard that, and haven’t seen PMQs in years. As ever, it’s only about morale in the House.
50:50 abolish minimum wage/national parks I reckon.
I love how those things are comparable in your eyes.
If Sir Keir Starmer is smart he could gain a march on Sunak and be MORE pro motorist than Sunak.
Driving is more important for hard stretched working families and swing voters who can't chill at home then go out for the day on a bus pass.
Starmer could point to Sunak and the Tories neglect of investment in our roads and pledge to do more, invest more.
You've misunderstood - I think they are equal chance of being the next gammon-bait topic, not equating their intrinsic value to the nation.
You also misunderstood earlier about my long post about the pro-motorist policy. I wasn't arguing the points, just laying out the various uncertainties over why it may or may not be successful for picking up more votes.
Yes your two proposals would be gammony, but next implies anything has happened that is gammony.
Do you think that being pro-motorist (which I don't think Sunak is being, if he was we'd have some investment and cut taxes on motoring) is "gammon-bait"?
Do you think the two thirds of people who commute to work by car, or the countless stretched parents who seek to drop kids off at school by car then be at work themselves, etc, are all gammons?
Well, by your reaction it's been highly effective. I don't think PB has ever seen you so animated.
I think we should agree what 'Labour landslide' means so that punditry can be properly evaluated against the outcome.
For me it means an overall majority of 75 or higher.
For me it's a hundred or more. Blair 2005 at 66 seats was not described as a landslide, Boris 2019 at 80 seats was described as a landslide, so your defn may be the popular one.
Still wrong, tho... 😀
Back in the real world Sir K will probably be under an overall majority, and will hope he only needs LD support and not SNP etc as well.
The Tories lose control of events is they lose 40+ seats. Labour need 123 for a majority. The boggy middle ground is huge. I think there is a 60+% we will be in that area.
Keeping the maths ridiculously simple, if Labour gain 45 seats form the Tories and no other change, the Tories lose control of events (320 seats) but Labour have only 247 seats. This would be fascinating, and some such picture is not impossible.
In that case the DUP becomes important again. A pity. However a few more non-Tory seats and they’ll return to the anonymity they deserve. Trouble is, of course, that Labour will have to rely on a rainbow coalition of support.
I think all this talk of Labour failing to get an overall majority is just Tory wishful thinking. The Tories aren't the natural governing party. In the last 30 years, with the exception of the 'Brexit' election that many people are making the mistake of taking as a baseline, the Tories have won only one parliamentary majority.
Cherry picking alert! Change that 30 years to 32 years and you double the number of Tory parliamentry majorities excuding the (second) "Brexit Election".
Very considerate of you to put "Cherry picking alert!" before your observation that there was another Tory majority 32 years ago ;-)
50:50 abolish minimum wage/national parks I reckon.
National parks would be more likely - he doesn't want to touch anything close to actual economics.
Since he's concentrating on absolute trivia, perhaps there might be something around dogshit? Funding a national squad of Dogshit Detectives to go after people who don't pick up after their pets?
Or go the other way and appeal to boomer nostalgia: vote Tory to bring back white dogshit.
Compulsory DNA sampling of all dugs enabling testing of dug shite to track down the errant owners. Doubling as Bully XL and XXL register.
ID cards for dogs.
Let dogs with ID cards vote once they get to 16 years old.
Kids, if you want to know what to get your dad for Christmas...
While we’re discussing Taiwan’s first domestically manufactured submarine today, let’s not forget to include in our discussion the commemorative liquor produced for the submarine program to date https://twitter.com/brianhioe/status/1707302133115297922
That really caught my attention. But it turns out to be, when translated by Google, 'Kinmen 58-degree "Platinum Dragon" premium sorghum wine' which - I am sure quite unfairly - sounds like something from Evelyn Waugh's Scoop. Does anyone know what the stuff is like to drink?
50:50 abolish minimum wage/national parks I reckon.
National parks would be more likely - he doesn't want to touch anything close to actual economics.
Since he's concentrating on absolute trivia, perhaps there might be something around dogshit? Funding a national squad of Dogshit Detectives to go after people who don't pick up after their pets?
Or go the other way and appeal to boomer nostalgia: vote Tory to bring back white dogshit.
Compulsory DNA sampling of all dugs enabling testing of dug shite to track down the errant owners. Doubling as Bully XL and XXL register.
ID cards for dogs.
Let dogs with ID cards vote once they get to 16 years old.
50:50 abolish minimum wage/national parks I reckon.
I love how those things are comparable in your eyes.
If Sir Keir Starmer is smart he could gain a march on Sunak and be MORE pro motorist than Sunak.
Driving is more important for hard stretched working families and swing voters who can't chill at home then go out for the day on a bus pass.
Starmer could point to Sunak and the Tories neglect of investment in our roads and pledge to do more, invest more.
You've misunderstood - I think they are equal chance of being the next gammon-bait topic, not equating their intrinsic value to the nation.
You also misunderstood earlier about my long post about the pro-motorist policy. I wasn't arguing the points, just laying out the various uncertainties over why it may or may not be successful for picking up more votes.
Yes your two proposals would be gammony, but next implies anything has happened that is gammony.
Do you think that being pro-motorist (which I don't think Sunak is being, if he was we'd have some investment and cut taxes on motoring) is "gammon-bait"?
Do you think the two thirds of people who commute to work by car, or the countless stretched parents who seek to drop kids off at school by car then be at work themselves, etc, are all gammons?
Well, by your reaction it's been highly effective. I don't think PB has ever seen you so animated.
I'm responding to you, and your fanaticism, not the news. Indeed I suggested Starmer could outflank Sunak on this by being more pro motorist than Sunak, since Sunday has a track record of not investing in our roads and Starmer could pledge to do more.
If you think Sunak merely not being hostile to drivers and pledging to do the bare minimum of maintaining roads, not even building any new ones, is "pro motorist" it shows how broken your Overton Window is. Sunak isn't getting my vote with that pathetic nothingness.
50:50 abolish minimum wage/national parks I reckon.
National parks would be more likely - he doesn't want to touch anything close to actual economics.
Since he's concentrating on absolute trivia, perhaps there might be something around dogshit? Funding a national squad of Dogshit Detectives to go after people who don't pick up after their pets?
Or go the other way and appeal to boomer nostalgia: vote Tory to bring back white dogshit.
I must admit I was amused by the concept of Sunak making hard decisions.
But I think it's going to be pretty hard for him to carry on coming up with a dog-whistle gimmick a week between now and the election - whenever it is.
The "inaction man" line really stung.
Starmer is just sitting back and watching him writhe.
50:50 abolish minimum wage/national parks I reckon.
I love how those things are comparable in your eyes.
If Sir Keir Starmer is smart he could gain a march on Sunak and be MORE pro motorist than Sunak.
Driving is more important for hard stretched working families and swing voters who can't chill at home then go out for the day on a bus pass.
Starmer could point to Sunak and the Tories neglect of investment in our roads and pledge to do more, invest more.
You've misunderstood - I think they are equal chance of being the next gammon-bait topic, not equating their intrinsic value to the nation.
You also misunderstood earlier about my long post about the pro-motorist policy. I wasn't arguing the points, just laying out the various uncertainties over why it may or may not be successful for picking up more votes.
Bring back the stagecoach! Complete with armed guards and hanging for highwaypersons!
Exeter and many other cities have had Stagecoach transport for years.
1) Not everyone is a motorist. Roughly 25% to 33% of households in the the "red wall" don't have access to one at all. I'm not sure if those people are likely swing voters - they tend to be poorer, higher rates of disability, younger or older... dunno.
2) Motorists are also cyclists, pedestrians, users of public transport. The effectiveness of the wedge depends on those who consider themselves primarily or exclusively motorists.
3) The STATS19 data for 2022 just came out. Labour could use that - 30,000 dead or seriously injured on our roads last year. (Plus, sadly, this coach crash)
4) It's a truth universally acknowledged that public transport outside London has seen woeful under-investment, now including HS2. This could be seen as a cheap ploy to distract from that. Most people commute by car by necessity rather than preference, as we see from the popularity of comprehensive public transport networks where they exist.
5) Age. There are stunning breakdowns of just how poorly the Conservatives are doing with under-50s. For young families, there are local concerns about driving around schools that Labour could "weaponise". For younger people, car ownership, licenses etc are at all time low after the pandemic, exacerbating a long-term trend. This policy might work in the short term, but in 2029, 2034?
1) So between two thirds to three quarters are motorists, and many of those in the smaller minority who aren't will be passengers quite often too. So yes by your own figures we should be investing in infrastructure.
2) And by the same logic cyclists, pedestrians and users of public transport are motorists too. So again, invest in infrastructure.
3) Our roads are remarkably safe, as those figures demonstrate. Billions of journeys made annually, but the risk of an accident is thankfully miniscule and has almost never been smaller.
4) It's a truth universally acknowledged that our road infrastructure nationwide has seen woeful under investment. The last major motorways to be built were half a century ago. Most people commute by car by choice as is shown where comprehensive public transport and smooth operating open roads are available, people choose the cars.
5) Yes many young families need to get their kids to school by car. Anyone who took an anti-parent weaponisation seeking to harm bringing kids to school would be on a hiding to nothing.
I always fail to see why so many parents use cars for what, in my youth, was a walk- or cycle-able journey. In our youth both my wife and I, at opposite ends of the country, walked around a mile to primary school. My wife, by the time she was about 7, was considered responsible enough to lead several younger children from the part of the estate where they lived, to school.
For very good reasons. Eg
1: Parents/pupils want a choice to go to good schools, not just be dumped in the closest school they can happen to walk to. If driving past a school you don't like allows you to help your kids education, that's a price well worth paying in my eyes.
2: People are more wary of letting kids be unsupervised in public nowadays, whether justified or not, because of too many stories of people harming kids etc. I wouldn't let my kids walk to or play in the park next to our estate unsupervised which doesn't even involved crossing any roads, let alone much further, to school.
And probably most importantly 3: Both parents in most families nowadays work so can't simply walk to a school and back home, they need to drop the kids off at school then continue their drive to get to their place of work. Dropping kids off at 8:45am and being at work for 9am is easier with a car.
'Back in the day' when mum walked the kids to school is easier if mum didn't have to go to work.
It is not compulsory
Well, it kind of is. Supporting three or four people on a median salary is, I would say, almost impossible.
Choice of lifestyle and location more like or choice of work etc.
Let's say you earn £1500 a month after tax. £800 of that goes in housing, £200 on groceries, £200 on utilities, £100 on transport costs (conservatively) - that leaves you £200 a month on 'lifestyle' - that includes clothing everyone, repairs and replacenents, holidays, rainy day saving, saving for a pension. Feel free to tell me any of my costs are out but I'd argue that managing all this is almost impossible.
My own view is that there will be a massive Labour landslide. It'd be bigger if Starmer actually had a character, but at the moment all he has to do is sit back and watch the government make mistake after mistake.
Here’s an example of the tightening of sanctions that Western countries need to be doing. At the moment just a warning, which is suboptimal.
🇪🇺 "The European Union has warned that it may ban the sale of some components to Turkiye and other countries where Iran and Russia buy parts for UAVs", - The Guardian
1) Not everyone is a motorist. Roughly 25% to 33% of households in the the "red wall" don't have access to one at all. I'm not sure if those people are likely swing voters - they tend to be poorer, higher rates of disability, younger or older... dunno.
2) Motorists are also cyclists, pedestrians, users of public transport. The effectiveness of the wedge depends on those who consider themselves primarily or exclusively motorists.
3) The STATS19 data for 2022 just came out. Labour could use that - 30,000 dead or seriously injured on our roads last year. (Plus, sadly, this coach crash)
4) It's a truth universally acknowledged that public transport outside London has seen woeful under-investment, now including HS2. This could be seen as a cheap ploy to distract from that. Most people commute by car by necessity rather than preference, as we see from the popularity of comprehensive public transport networks where they exist.
5) Age. There are stunning breakdowns of just how poorly the Conservatives are doing with under-50s. For young families, there are local concerns about driving around schools that Labour could "weaponise". For younger people, car ownership, licenses etc are at all time low after the pandemic, exacerbating a long-term trend. This policy might work in the short term, but in 2029, 2034?
1) So between two thirds to three quarters are motorists, and many of those in the smaller minority who aren't will be passengers quite often too. So yes by your own figures we should be investing in infrastructure.
2) And by the same logic cyclists, pedestrians and users of public transport are motorists too. So again, invest in infrastructure.
3) Our roads are remarkably safe, as those figures demonstrate. Billions of journeys made annually, but the risk of an accident is thankfully miniscule and has almost never been smaller.
4) It's a truth universally acknowledged that our road infrastructure nationwide has seen woeful under investment. The last major motorways to be built were half a century ago. Most people commute by car by choice as is shown where comprehensive public transport and smooth operating open roads are available, people choose the cars.
5) Yes many young families need to get their kids to school by car. Anyone who took an anti-parent weaponisation seeking to harm bringing kids to school would be on a hiding to nothing.
I always fail to see why so many parents use cars for what, in my youth, was a walk- or cycle-able journey. In our youth both my wife and I, at opposite ends of the country, walked around a mile to primary school. My wife, by the time she was about 7, was considered responsible enough to lead several younger children from the part of the estate where they lived, to school.
For very good reasons. Eg
1: Parents/pupils want a choice to go to good schools, not just be dumped in the closest school they can happen to walk to. If driving past a school you don't like allows you to help your kids education, that's a price well worth paying in my eyes.
2: People are more wary of letting kids be unsupervised in public nowadays, whether justified or not, because of too many stories of people harming kids etc. I wouldn't let my kids walk to or play in the park next to our estate unsupervised which doesn't even involved crossing any roads, let alone much further, to school.
And probably most importantly 3: Both parents in most families nowadays work so can't simply walk to a school and back home, they need to drop the kids off at school then continue their drive to get to their place of work. Dropping kids off at 8:45am and being at work for 9am is easier with a car.
'Back in the day' when mum walked the kids to school is easier if mum didn't have to go to work.
It is not compulsory
Well, it kind of is. Supporting three or four people on a median salary is, I would say, almost impossible.
Choice of lifestyle and location more like or choice of work etc.
PS , agree in London
Hello, Malky. Hope you have been OK over in the west. Still breezy and now sunny here in the east.
Hello Carnyx , Yes been wet and a bit breezy , bit of sunshine just now but not great. Autumn is definitely here.
I think we should agree what 'Labour landslide' means so that punditry can be properly evaluated against the outcome.
For me it means an overall majority of 75 or higher.
For me it's a hundred or more. Blair 2005 at 66 seats was not described as a landslide, Boris 2019 at 80 seats was described as a landslide, so your defn may be the popular one.
Still wrong, tho... 😀
Back in the real world Sir K will probably be under an overall majority, and will hope he only needs LD support and not SNP etc as well.
The Tories lose control of events is they lose 40+ seats. Labour need 123 for a majority. The boggy middle ground is huge. I think there is a 60+% we will be in that area.
Keeping the maths ridiculously simple, if Labour gain 45 seats form the Tories and no other change, the Tories lose control of events (320 seats) but Labour have only 247 seats. This would be fascinating, and some such picture is not impossible.
In that case the DUP becomes important again. A pity. However a few more non-Tory seats and they’ll return to the anonymity they deserve. Trouble is, of course, that Labour will have to rely on a rainbow coalition of support.
Yes. The most interesting element of the 2024 election is how few seats the Tories have to lose to lose control, and how few Labour have to win to have a decent prospect of gaining control.
The Tories lose control, though not all hope, if they lose 41 seats - making them 324. They almost certainly lose all hope if they lose 51 seats, making them 314.
They can lose this number by losing 20 to the LDs and 31 to Labour. Labour then have 233 seats, Tories have 314 and SFAICS Labour would lead the (extremely rainbow) government.
This starkly contrasts with the 123 seats Labour need for an absolute majority.
All my figures can be out by one or two, but the principle remains.
Those weak coalition numbers where Labour has fewer than 300 seats, and the Tories around the same, must keep Starmer up at night. Given the country’s underlying issues, winning the next election (and even lasting five years) would be hard.
If Labour enter Number 10 with fewer seats than the Tories the only sensible thing for Starmer to do is to spend six months making the case to the electorate as to why they should trust him with a majority to do the job properly, and then to call another election, as Wilson did in 1974.
50:50 abolish minimum wage/national parks I reckon.
National parks would be more likely - he doesn't want to touch anything close to actual economics.
Since he's concentrating on absolute trivia, perhaps there might be something around dogshit? Funding a national squad of Dogshit Detectives to go after people who don't pick up after their pets?
Or go the other way and appeal to boomer nostalgia: vote Tory to bring back white dogshit.
Compulsory DNA sampling of all dugs enabling testing of dug shite to track down the errant owners. Doubling as Bully XL and XXL register.
ID cards for dogs.
Put Williamson in charge of this project and we will end up with compulsory dogs to get a passport or driving licence.
I think we should agree what 'Labour landslide' means so that punditry can be properly evaluated against the outcome.
For me it means an overall majority of 75 or higher.
For me it's a hundred or more. Blair 2005 at 66 seats was not described as a landslide, Boris 2019 at 80 seats was described as a landslide, so your defn may be the popular one.
Still wrong, tho... 😀
Back in the real world Sir K will probably be under an overall majority, and will hope he only needs LD support and not SNP etc as well.
The Tories lose control of events is they lose 40+ seats. Labour need 123 for a majority. The boggy middle ground is huge. I think there is a 60+% we will be in that area.
Keeping the maths ridiculously simple, if Labour gain 45 seats form the Tories and no other change, the Tories lose control of events (320 seats) but Labour have only 247 seats. This would be fascinating, and some such picture is not impossible.
In that case the DUP becomes important again. A pity. However a few more non-Tory seats and they’ll return to the anonymity they deserve. Trouble is, of course, that Labour will have to rely on a rainbow coalition of support.
I think all this talk of Labour failing to get an overall majority is just Tory wishful thinking. The Tories aren't the natural governing party. In the last 30 years, with the exception of the 'Brexit' election that many people are making the mistake of taking as a baseline, the Tories have won only one parliamentary majority.
Cherry picking alert! Change that 30 years to 32 years and you double the number of Tory parliamentry majorities excuding the (second) "Brexit Election".
Very considerate of you to put "Cherry picking alert!" before your observation that there was another Tory majority 32 years ago ;-)
That is exactly my point. As was the choice of the word "doubling" instead of two.
50:50 abolish minimum wage/national parks I reckon.
National parks would be more likely - he doesn't want to touch anything close to actual economics.
Since he's concentrating on absolute trivia, perhaps there might be something around dogshit? Funding a national squad of Dogshit Detectives to go after people who don't pick up after their pets?
Or go the other way and appeal to boomer nostalgia: vote Tory to bring back white dogshit.
I must admit I was amused by the concept of Sunak making hard decisions.
But I think it's going to be pretty hard for him to carry on coming up with a dog-whistle gimmick a week between now and the election - whenever it is.
The "inaction man" line really stung.
Starmer is just sitting back and watching him writhe.
I regret to inform you all that both Nigel and Malcolm are at it. Again
Only returning the SCUMBAG in kind. He has been told many times to F**K OFF and not post insults about me but the SCUMBAG excuse pretending to be a human has not the intellect to understand that.
50:50 abolish minimum wage/national parks I reckon.
National parks would be more likely - he doesn't want to touch anything close to actual economics.
Since he's concentrating on absolute trivia, perhaps there might be something around dogshit? Funding a national squad of Dogshit Detectives to go after people who don't pick up after their pets?
Or go the other way and appeal to boomer nostalgia: vote Tory to bring back white dogshit.
I must admit I was amused by the concept of Sunak making hard decisions.
But I think it's going to be pretty hard for him to carry on coming up with a dog-whistle gimmick a week between now and the election - whenever it is.
The "inaction man" line really stung.
Starmer is just sitting back and watching him writhe.
Hmmm. I assume that was PMQs? I follow politics (I post here after all) but hadn’t heard that, and haven’t seen PMQs in years. As ever, it’s only about morale in the House.
Yeah, two weeks ago. Starmer was tying together threads on ignoring warnings about RAAC in schools, and sitting on investigations into interference by China.
At the time, it did feel like it was just another moderately good line that wouldn't resonate beyond PMQs. But Sunak appears to have taken quite personal exception to it - his spin doctors were trying to push a "man of action" rebuttal later that day and the torrent of trivial announcements started very soon after.
I wonder if we might look back at it as being an obvious turning point.
Kids, if you want to know what to get your dad for Christmas...
While we’re discussing Taiwan’s first domestically manufactured submarine today, let’s not forget to include in our discussion the commemorative liquor produced for the submarine program to date https://twitter.com/brianhioe/status/1707302133115297922
That really caught my attention. But it turns out to be, when translated by Google, 'Kinmen 58-degree "Platinum Dragon" premium sorghum wine' which - I am sure quite unfairly - sounds like something from Evelyn Waugh's Scoop. Does anyone know what the stuff is like to drink?
50:50 abolish minimum wage/national parks I reckon.
I love how those things are comparable in your eyes.
If Sir Keir Starmer is smart he could gain a march on Sunak and be MORE pro motorist than Sunak.
Driving is more important for hard stretched working families and swing voters who can't chill at home then go out for the day on a bus pass.
Starmer could point to Sunak and the Tories neglect of investment in our roads and pledge to do more, invest more.
You've misunderstood - I think they are equal chance of being the next gammon-bait topic, not equating their intrinsic value to the nation.
You also misunderstood earlier about my long post about the pro-motorist policy. I wasn't arguing the points, just laying out the various uncertainties over why it may or may not be successful for picking up more votes.
Yes your two proposals would be gammony, but next implies anything has happened that is gammony.
Do you think that being pro-motorist (which I don't think Sunak is being, if he was we'd have some investment and cut taxes on motoring) is "gammon-bait"?
Do you think the two thirds of people who commute to work by car, or the countless stretched parents who seek to drop kids off at school by car then be at work themselves, etc, are all gammons?
Well, by your reaction it's been highly effective. I don't think PB has ever seen you so animated.
I'm responding to you, and your fanaticism, not the news. Indeed I suggested Starmer could outflank Sunak on this by being more pro motorist than Sunak, since Sunday has a track record of not investing in our roads and Starmer could pledge to do more.
If you think Sunak merely not being hostile to drivers and pledging to do the bare minimum of maintaining roads, not even building any new ones, is "pro motorist" it shows how broken your Overton Window is. Sunak isn't getting my vote with that pathetic nothingness.
So you won't vote Conservative because Sunak isn't pro-motorist enough?
I read an interesting article the other day, by an economist, who said we have consistently underestimated Russian economic strength - see the PPP data - which has in turn led us to underestimate its military strength. It was quite persuasive
I’ll try and dig out the link
Does that not depend on the question though? I thought the West feared that Russia would invade and take over Europe (i.e. throughout the cold war)? The war in Ukraine has shown they cannot do that. That Ukraine has not ejected them from their territory is not in itself a testament to Russian strength.
It’s a partial explanation as to why Russia has not collapsed under the weight of sanctions. And has been able to buy more weaponry than we expected
It doesn’t mean Russia is gonna take all of Ukraine. It does mean it might be really hard for Ukraine to dislodge Russia from what they occupy now
Early in the war I mentioned Croatia as a possible precedent for the way the war might play out. Crisis fight the Serbs to a standstill, rapidly modernized their armed forces during a couple of years of peace, and then swept the Serbs out in a rapid liberation campaign.
I think that's a much more likely scenario than a repeat of the Korean ceasefire. Ukraine's indigenous capabilities are rapidly improving, F-16s are coming, Russia's stocks of Cold War equipment continue to be depleted.
The potential difference is China. If China starts providing artillery, armoured vehicles and other supplies to Russia then the situation becomes much more difficult.
Not. Gonna. Happen.
China views Russia as a rival not an ally.
Russia occupies historic Chinese territory they're still interested in and also China wants to be the large and in charge power in Asia, not their noisy northern neighbours.
The Voice of Warrington thunders across the Eurasian steppes
50:50 abolish minimum wage/national parks I reckon.
National parks would be more likely - he doesn't want to touch anything close to actual economics.
Since he's concentrating on absolute trivia, perhaps there might be something around dogshit? Funding a national squad of Dogshit Detectives to go after people who don't pick up after their pets?
Or go the other way and appeal to boomer nostalgia: vote Tory to bring back white dogshit.
I must admit I was amused by the concept of Sunak making hard decisions.
But I think it's going to be pretty hard for him to carry on coming up with a dog-whistle gimmick a week between now and the election - whenever it is.
The "inaction man" line really stung.
Starmer is just sitting back and watching him writhe.
Hmmm. I assume that was PMQs? I follow politics (I post here after all) but hadn’t heard that, and haven’t seen PMQs in years. As ever, it’s only about morale in the House.
Yeah, two weeks ago. Starmer was tying together threads on ignoring warnings about RAAC in schools, and sitting on investigations into interference by China.
At the time, it did feel like it was just another moderately good line that wouldn't resonate beyond PMQs. But Sunak appears to have taken quite personal exception to it - his spin doctors were trying to push a "man of action" rebuttal later that day and the torrent of trivial announcements started very soon after.
I wonder if we might look back at it as being an obvious turning point.
It's not a great line in itself but the impact going forward is genius. Sunak has to respond immediately to any topic lest he is branded with it at every PMQs till the election.
I think we should agree what 'Labour landslide' means so that punditry can be properly evaluated against the outcome.
For me it means an overall majority of 75 or higher.
For me it's a hundred or more. Blair 2005 at 66 seats was not described as a landslide, Boris 2019 at 80 seats was described as a landslide, so your defn may be the popular one.
Still wrong, tho... 😀
Back in the real world Sir K will probably be under an overall majority, and will hope he only needs LD support and not SNP etc as well.
The Tories lose control of events is they lose 40+ seats. Labour need 123 for a majority. The boggy middle ground is huge. I think there is a 60+% we will be in that area.
Keeping the maths ridiculously simple, if Labour gain 45 seats form the Tories and no other change, the Tories lose control of events (320 seats) but Labour have only 247 seats. This would be fascinating, and some such picture is not impossible.
In that case the DUP becomes important again. A pity. However a few more non-Tory seats and they’ll return to the anonymity they deserve. Trouble is, of course, that Labour will have to rely on a rainbow coalition of support.
Yes. The most interesting element of the 2024 election is how few seats the Tories have to lose to lose control, and how few Labour have to win to have a decent prospect of gaining control.
The Tories lose control, though not all hope, if they lose 41 seats - making them 324. They almost certainly lose all hope if they lose 51 seats, making them 314.
They can lose this number by losing 20 to the LDs and 31 to Labour. Labour then have 233 seats, Tories have 314 and SFAICS Labour would lead the (extremely rainbow) government.
This starkly contrasts with the 123 seats Labour need for an absolute majority.
All my figures can be out by one or two, but the principle remains. I suggest that this element will make the 2024 election particularly fascinating as the polls tighten.
The second scenario of an extremely rainbow coalition that you raise is an intriguing one. It strikes me that it couldn't realistically last more than six months, and I question if either Starmer or Sunak would fight the subsequent election as a party leader. Sunak would have lost the keys to Number 10 and quite a few rivals would fancy taking it on, while Starmer would look like little more than a caretaker and, having fallen significantly short of expectations and of a real mandate, would be under great pressure to make way too.
50:50 abolish minimum wage/national parks I reckon.
I love how those things are comparable in your eyes.
If Sir Keir Starmer is smart he could gain a march on Sunak and be MORE pro motorist than Sunak.
Driving is more important for hard stretched working families and swing voters who can't chill at home then go out for the day on a bus pass.
Starmer could point to Sunak and the Tories neglect of investment in our roads and pledge to do more, invest more.
You've misunderstood - I think they are equal chance of being the next gammon-bait topic, not equating their intrinsic value to the nation.
You also misunderstood earlier about my long post about the pro-motorist policy. I wasn't arguing the points, just laying out the various uncertainties over why it may or may not be successful for picking up more votes.
Yes your two proposals would be gammony, but next implies anything has happened that is gammony.
Do you think that being pro-motorist (which I don't think Sunak is being, if he was we'd have some investment and cut taxes on motoring) is "gammon-bait"?
Do you think the two thirds of people who commute to work by car, or the countless stretched parents who seek to drop kids off at school by car then be at work themselves, etc, are all gammons?
Well, by your reaction it's been highly effective. I don't think PB has ever seen you so animated.
I'm responding to you, and your fanaticism, not the news. Indeed I suggested Starmer could outflank Sunak on this by being more pro motorist than Sunak, since Sunday has a track record of not investing in our roads and Starmer could pledge to do more.
If you think Sunak merely not being hostile to drivers and pledging to do the bare minimum of maintaining roads, not even building any new ones, is "pro motorist" it shows how broken your Overton Window is. Sunak isn't getting my vote with that pathetic nothingness.
So you won't vote Conservative because Sunak isn't pro-motorist enough?
And you think it's my window that's broken?
No, I wouldn't vote Conservative because of the plethora of reasons I've quit the Conservatives.
If the Tories want to win my vote back they'd need to do something positive. Simply not being overly hostile to driving isn't pro motorist and isn't a vote winner.
If Labour do become overtly hostile though, that could become a vote loser. But Starmer is probably too smart to go down that dead end road.
50:50 abolish minimum wage/national parks I reckon.
I love how those things are comparable in your eyes.
If Sir Keir Starmer is smart he could gain a march on Sunak and be MORE pro motorist than Sunak.
Driving is more important for hard stretched working families and swing voters who can't chill at home then go out for the day on a bus pass.
Starmer could point to Sunak and the Tories neglect of investment in our roads and pledge to do more, invest more.
You've misunderstood - I think they are equal chance of being the next gammon-bait topic, not equating their intrinsic value to the nation.
You also misunderstood earlier about my long post about the pro-motorist policy. I wasn't arguing the points, just laying out the various uncertainties over why it may or may not be successful for picking up more votes.
Yes your two proposals would be gammony, but next implies anything has happened that is gammony.
Do you think that being pro-motorist (which I don't think Sunak is being, if he was we'd have some investment and cut taxes on motoring) is "gammon-bait"?
Do you think the two thirds of people who commute to work by car, or the countless stretched parents who seek to drop kids off at school by car then be at work themselves, etc, are all gammons?
Well, by your reaction it's been highly effective. I don't think PB has ever seen you so animated.
I'm responding to you, and your fanaticism, not the news. Indeed I suggested Starmer could outflank Sunak on this by being more pro motorist than Sunak, since Sunday has a track record of not investing in our roads and Starmer could pledge to do more.
If you think Sunak merely not being hostile to drivers and pledging to do the bare minimum of maintaining roads, not even building any new ones, is "pro motorist" it shows how broken your Overton Window is. Sunak isn't getting my vote with that pathetic nothingness.
So you won't vote Conservative because Sunak isn't pro-motorist enough?
And you think it's my window that's broken?
He's right on one point though. Starmer can (and should) outcompete Sunak on being pro-infrastructure full stop. End the silly zero-sum thinking that implies investment should be either in public transport or roads. Pledge to complete the big rail projects, but also to push through major infrastructure upgrades for road transport where these make sense. Point to Khan's Silvertown tunnel as the biggest current roadbuilding project in the country. Pledge to properly fund and give more power to local authorities so they can maintain roads and potholes. After all most roads are a LA responsibility, not central government.
Kids, if you want to know what to get your dad for Christmas...
While we’re discussing Taiwan’s first domestically manufactured submarine today, let’s not forget to include in our discussion the commemorative liquor produced for the submarine program to date https://twitter.com/brianhioe/status/1707302133115297922
That really caught my attention. But it turns out to be, when translated by Google, 'Kinmen 58-degree "Platinum Dragon" premium sorghum wine' which - I am sure quite unfairly - sounds like something from Evelyn Waugh's Scoop. Does anyone know what the stuff is like to drink?
Rocket fuel, appropriately. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaoliang_liquor ...while telling the story of his birth, Li Kao describes kaoliang as "the finest paint thinner and worst wine ever invented"...
50:50 abolish minimum wage/national parks I reckon.
The motorist thing has way further to run. Right now, if you make an honest mistake and kill someone when you're driving, or just have a few too many beers before you get behind the wheel, you can end up in big trouble. How is that fair? Why not allow each motorist one pedestrian fatality a year before the police get involved? This is just common sense and British values.
I think we should agree what 'Labour landslide' means so that punditry can be properly evaluated against the outcome.
For me it means an overall majority of 75 or higher.
For me it's a hundred or more. Blair 2005 at 66 seats was not described as a landslide, Boris 2019 at 80 seats was described as a landslide, so your defn may be the popular one.
Still wrong, tho... 😀
Back in the real world Sir K will probably be under an overall majority, and will hope he only needs LD support and not SNP etc as well.
The Tories lose control of events is they lose 40+ seats. Labour need 123 for a majority. The boggy middle ground is huge. I think there is a 60+% we will be in that area.
Keeping the maths ridiculously simple, if Labour gain 45 seats form the Tories and no other change, the Tories lose control of events (320 seats) but Labour have only 247 seats. This would be fascinating, and some such picture is not impossible.
In that case the DUP becomes important again. A pity. However a few more non-Tory seats and they’ll return to the anonymity they deserve. Trouble is, of course, that Labour will have to rely on a rainbow coalition of support.
Yes. The most interesting element of the 2024 election is how few seats the Tories have to lose to lose control, and how few Labour have to win to have a decent prospect of gaining control.
The Tories lose control, though not all hope, if they lose 41 seats - making them 324. They almost certainly lose all hope if they lose 51 seats, making them 314.
They can lose this number by losing 20 to the LDs and 31 to Labour. Labour then have 233 seats, Tories have 314 and SFAICS Labour would lead the (extremely rainbow) government.
This starkly contrasts with the 123 seats Labour need for an absolute majority.
All my figures can be out by one or two, but the principle remains. I suggest that this element will make the 2024 election particularly fascinating as the polls tighten.
The second scenario of an extremely rainbow coalition that you raise is an intriguing one. It strikes me that it couldn't realistically last more than six months, and I question if either Starmer or Sunak would fight the subsequent election as a party leader. Sunak would have lost the keys to Number 10 and quite a few rivals would fancy taking it on, while Starmer would look like little more than a caretaker and, having fallen significantly short of expectations and of a real mandate, would be under great pressure to make way too.
I think Starmer would be safe. It would be like Wilson in 64, with a second election and a safe majority.
Kids, if you want to know what to get your dad for Christmas...
While we’re discussing Taiwan’s first domestically manufactured submarine today, let’s not forget to include in our discussion the commemorative liquor produced for the submarine program to date https://twitter.com/brianhioe/status/1707302133115297922
That really caught my attention. But it turns out to be, when translated by Google, 'Kinmen 58-degree "Platinum Dragon" premium sorghum wine' which - I am sure quite unfairly - sounds like something from Evelyn Waugh's Scoop. Does anyone know what the stuff is like to drink?
50:50 abolish minimum wage/national parks I reckon.
National parks would be more likely - he doesn't want to touch anything close to actual economics.
Since he's concentrating on absolute trivia, perhaps there might be something around dogshit? Funding a national squad of Dogshit Detectives to go after people who don't pick up after their pets?
Or go the other way and appeal to boomer nostalgia: vote Tory to bring back white dogshit.
I must admit I was amused by the concept of Sunak making hard decisions.
But I think it's going to be pretty hard for him to carry on coming up with a dog-whistle gimmick a week between now and the election - whenever it is.
The "inaction man" line really stung.
Starmer is just sitting back and watching him writhe.
Hmmm. I assume that was PMQs? I follow politics (I post here after all) but hadn’t heard that, and haven’t seen PMQs in years. As ever, it’s only about morale in the House.
Yeah, two weeks ago. Starmer was tying together threads on ignoring warnings about RAAC in schools, and sitting on investigations into interference by China.
At the time, it did feel like it was just another moderately good line that wouldn't resonate beyond PMQs. But Sunak appears to have taken quite personal exception to it - his spin doctors were trying to push a "man of action" rebuttal later that day and the torrent of trivial announcements started very soon after.
I wonder if we might look back at it as being an obvious turning point.
It's not a great line in itself but the impact going forward is genius. Sunak has to respond immediately to any topic lest he is branded with it at every PMQs till the election.
If Starmer is smart, he might find a way to contrast Sunak's behaviour before and after. Something like Vince Cable's "from Stalin to Mr Bean" line about Gordon Brown.
I think we should agree what 'Labour landslide' means so that punditry can be properly evaluated against the outcome.
For me it means an overall majority of 75 or higher.
For me it's a hundred or more. Blair 2005 at 66 seats was not described as a landslide, Boris 2019 at 80 seats was described as a landslide, so your defn may be the popular one.
Still wrong, tho... 😀
Back in the real world Sir K will probably be under an overall majority, and will hope he only needs LD support and not SNP etc as well.
The Tories lose control of events is they lose 40+ seats. Labour need 123 for a majority. The boggy middle ground is huge. I think there is a 60+% we will be in that area.
Keeping the maths ridiculously simple, if Labour gain 45 seats form the Tories and no other change, the Tories lose control of events (320 seats) but Labour have only 247 seats. This would be fascinating, and some such picture is not impossible.
FPTP is lauded for delivering clear results, avoiding back room coalition deals… but it doesn’t. Two party politics delivers clear results. As two party politics has eroded in the UK (Northern Ireland doing its own thing, rise of SNP and PC, LibDems doing better), hung Parliaments have become more and more likely. Thus we’ve had 2 out of the last 4 general elections end in a hung Parliament.
I think Labour will probably win an overall majority, but then 2029 or 2034 will go hung.
I think we should agree what 'Labour landslide' means so that punditry can be properly evaluated against the outcome.
For me it means an overall majority of 75 or higher.
For me it's a hundred or more. Blair 2005 at 66 seats was not described as a landslide, Boris 2019 at 80 seats was described as a landslide, so your defn may be the popular one.
Still wrong, tho... 😀
Back in the real world Sir K will probably be under an overall majority, and will hope he only needs LD support and not SNP etc as well.
The Tories lose control of events is they lose 40+ seats. Labour need 123 for a majority. The boggy middle ground is huge. I think there is a 60+% we will be in that area.
Keeping the maths ridiculously simple, if Labour gain 45 seats form the Tories and no other change, the Tories lose control of events (320 seats) but Labour have only 247 seats. This would be fascinating, and some such picture is not impossible.
In that case the DUP becomes important again. A pity. However a few more non-Tory seats and they’ll return to the anonymity they deserve. Trouble is, of course, that Labour will have to rely on a rainbow coalition of support.
Yes. The most interesting element of the 2024 election is how few seats the Tories have to lose to lose control, and how few Labour have to win to have a decent prospect of gaining control.
The Tories lose control, though not all hope, if they lose 41 seats - making them 324. They almost certainly lose all hope if they lose 51 seats, making them 314.
They can lose this number by losing 20 to the LDs and 31 to Labour. Labour then have 233 seats, Tories have 314 and SFAICS Labour would lead the (extremely rainbow) government.
This starkly contrasts with the 123 seats Labour need for an absolute majority.
All my figures can be out by one or two, but the principle remains. I suggest that this element will make the 2024 election particularly fascinating as the polls tighten.
The second scenario of an extremely rainbow coalition that you raise is an intriguing one. It strikes me that it couldn't realistically last more than six months, and I question if either Starmer or Sunak would fight the subsequent election as a party leader. Sunak would have lost the keys to Number 10 and quite a few rivals would fancy taking it on, while Starmer would look like little more than a caretaker and, having fallen significantly short of expectations and of a real mandate, would be under great pressure to make way too.
I don't think the extremely rainbow coalition would happen in practice. It would be an equally unstable Labour-led minority government made up of Lab+Lib+Alliance/SDLP+Green but excluding the SNP and (probably) PC. They would work on the basis the SNP dare not bring the government down for fear of being labelled Tartan Tories again. The Tories would have a field day. There would be another election in a few months, which would quite possibly result in another hung parliament.
I think we should agree what 'Labour landslide' means so that punditry can be properly evaluated against the outcome.
For me it means an overall majority of 75 or higher.
For me it's a hundred or more. Blair 2005 at 66 seats was not described as a landslide, Boris 2019 at 80 seats was described as a landslide, so your defn may be the popular one.
Still wrong, tho... 😀
Back in the real world Sir K will probably be under an overall majority, and will hope he only needs LD support and not SNP etc as well.
The Tories lose control of events is they lose 40+ seats. Labour need 123 for a majority. The boggy middle ground is huge. I think there is a 60+% we will be in that area.
Keeping the maths ridiculously simple, if Labour gain 45 seats form the Tories and no other change, the Tories lose control of events (320 seats) but Labour have only 247 seats. This would be fascinating, and some such picture is not impossible.
In that case the DUP becomes important again. A pity. However a few more non-Tory seats and they’ll return to the anonymity they deserve. Trouble is, of course, that Labour will have to rely on a rainbow coalition of support.
Yes. The most interesting element of the 2024 election is how few seats the Tories have to lose to lose control, and how few Labour have to win to have a decent prospect of gaining control.
The Tories lose control, though not all hope, if they lose 41 seats - making them 324. They almost certainly lose all hope if they lose 51 seats, making them 314.
They can lose this number by losing 20 to the LDs and 31 to Labour. Labour then have 233 seats, Tories have 314 and SFAICS Labour would lead the (extremely rainbow) government.
This starkly contrasts with the 123 seats Labour need for an absolute majority.
All my figures can be out by one or two, but the principle remains. I suggest that this element will make the 2024 election particularly fascinating as the polls tighten.
The second scenario of an extremely rainbow coalition that you raise is an intriguing one. It strikes me that it couldn't realistically last more than six months, and I question if either Starmer or Sunak would fight the subsequent election as a party leader. Sunak would have lost the keys to Number 10 and quite a few rivals would fancy taking it on, while Starmer would look like little more than a caretaker and, having fallen significantly short of expectations and of a real mandate, would be under great pressure to make way too.
If Starmer wins fewer than the 262 seats won by Corbyn's Labour in 2017 then it would be a major humiliation for him.
Starmer's entire reason for being is to do what Corbyn couldn't do and win the election.
50:50 abolish minimum wage/national parks I reckon.
The motorist thing has way further to run. Right now, if you make an honest mistake and kill someone when you're driving, or just have a few too many beers before you get behind the wheel, you can end up in big trouble. How is that fair? Why not allow each motorist one pedestrian fatality a year before the police get involved? This is just common sense and British values.
Yep, only 30,000 deaths and serious injuries is evidence that the country isn't taking economic growth seriously enough.
The “British values speed limit” thing does carry the strong whiff of decomposition. This is a government rotting in office. Like a dead pilot slumped over the altimeter
50:50 abolish minimum wage/national parks I reckon.
National parks would be more likely - he doesn't want to touch anything close to actual economics.
Since he's concentrating on absolute trivia, perhaps there might be something around dogshit? Funding a national squad of Dogshit Detectives to go after people who don't pick up after their pets?
Or go the other way and appeal to boomer nostalgia: vote Tory to bring back white dogshit.
I must admit I was amused by the concept of Sunak making hard decisions.
But I think it's going to be pretty hard for him to carry on coming up with a dog-whistle gimmick a week between now and the election - whenever it is.
Some further constraints.
Any announcements can't cost actual money, because the whole narrative is that the government doesn't have any money.
Furthermore, the UK can blow rasperries at the EU, but can't do anything substantively Brexity/ECHRxity. Windsor Agreement has seen to that.
That rules out a lot, and the things it leaves risk becoming very samey after a while.
50:50 abolish minimum wage/national parks I reckon.
National parks would be more likely - he doesn't want to touch anything close to actual economics.
Since he's concentrating on absolute trivia, perhaps there might be something around dogshit? Funding a national squad of Dogshit Detectives to go after people who don't pick up after their pets?
Or go the other way and appeal to boomer nostalgia: vote Tory to bring back white dogshit.
I must admit I was amused by the concept of Sunak making hard decisions.
But I think it's going to be pretty hard for him to carry on coming up with a dog-whistle gimmick a week between now and the election - whenever it is.
The "inaction man" line really stung.
Starmer is just sitting back and watching him writhe.
Hmmm. I assume that was PMQs? I follow politics (I post here after all) but hadn’t heard that, and haven’t seen PMQs in years. As ever, it’s only about morale in the House.
Yeah, two weeks ago. Starmer was tying together threads on ignoring warnings about RAAC in schools, and sitting on investigations into interference by China.
At the time, it did feel like it was just another moderately good line that wouldn't resonate beyond PMQs. But Sunak appears to have taken quite personal exception to it - his spin doctors were trying to push a "man of action" rebuttal later that day and the torrent of trivial announcements started very soon after.
I wonder if we might look back at it as being an obvious turning point.
It's not a great line in itself but the impact going forward is genius. Sunak has to respond immediately to any topic lest he is branded with it at every PMQs till the election.
If Starmer is smart, he might find a way to contrast Sunak's behaviour before and after. Something like Vince Cable's "from Stalin to Mr Bean" line about Gordon Brown.
From inaction man to Ken after his trip to Mattel HQ.
1) Not everyone is a motorist. Roughly 25% to 33% of households in the the "red wall" don't have access to one at all. I'm not sure if those people are likely swing voters - they tend to be poorer, higher rates of disability, younger or older... dunno.
2) Motorists are also cyclists, pedestrians, users of public transport. The effectiveness of the wedge depends on those who consider themselves primarily or exclusively motorists.
3) The STATS19 data for 2022 just came out. Labour could use that - 30,000 dead or seriously injured on our roads last year. (Plus, sadly, this coach crash)
4) It's a truth universally acknowledged that public transport outside London has seen woeful under-investment, now including HS2. This could be seen as a cheap ploy to distract from that. Most people commute by car by necessity rather than preference, as we see from the popularity of comprehensive public transport networks where they exist.
5) Age. There are stunning breakdowns of just how poorly the Conservatives are doing with under-50s. For young families, there are local concerns about driving around schools that Labour could "weaponise". For younger people, car ownership, licenses etc are at all time low after the pandemic, exacerbating a long-term trend. This policy might work in the short term, but in 2029, 2034?
1) So between two thirds to three quarters are motorists, and many of those in the smaller minority who aren't will be passengers quite often too. So yes by your own figures we should be investing in infrastructure.
2) And by the same logic cyclists, pedestrians and users of public transport are motorists too. So again, invest in infrastructure.
3) Our roads are remarkably safe, as those figures demonstrate. Billions of journeys made annually, but the risk of an accident is thankfully miniscule and has almost never been smaller.
4) It's a truth universally acknowledged that our road infrastructure nationwide has seen woeful under investment. The last major motorways to be built were half a century ago. Most people commute by car by choice as is shown where comprehensive public transport and smooth operating open roads are available, people choose the cars.
5) Yes many young families need to get their kids to school by car. Anyone who took an anti-parent weaponisation seeking to harm bringing kids to school would be on a hiding to nothing.
I always fail to see why so many parents use cars for what, in my youth, was a walk- or cycle-able journey. In our youth both my wife and I, at opposite ends of the country, walked around a mile to primary school. My wife, by the time she was about 7, was considered responsible enough to lead several younger children from the part of the estate where they lived, to school.
For very good reasons. Eg
1: Parents/pupils want a choice to go to good schools, not just be dumped in the closest school they can happen to walk to. If driving past a school you don't like allows you to help your kids education, that's a price well worth paying in my eyes.
2: People are more wary of letting kids be unsupervised in public nowadays, whether justified or not, because of too many stories of people harming kids etc. I wouldn't let my kids walk to or play in the park next to our estate unsupervised which doesn't even involved crossing any roads, let alone much further, to school.
And probably most importantly 3: Both parents in most families nowadays work so can't simply walk to a school and back home, they need to drop the kids off at school then continue their drive to get to their place of work. Dropping kids off at 8:45am and being at work for 9am is easier with a car.
'Back in the day' when mum walked the kids to school is easier if mum didn't have to go to work.
It is not compulsory
Well, it kind of is. Supporting three or four people on a median salary is, I would say, almost impossible.
Choice of lifestyle and location more like or choice of work etc.
Let's say you earn £1500 a month after tax. £800 of that goes in housing, £200 on groceries, £200 on utilities, £100 on transport costs (conservatively) - that leaves you £200 a month on 'lifestyle' - that includes clothing everyone, repairs and replacenents, holidays, rainy day saving, saving for a pension. Feel free to tell me any of my costs are out but I'd argue that managing all this is almost impossible.
On that amount I agree
I would say that's optimistic about the amount that would be left. I think necessities (excluding housing and transport) cost a lot more than £400 a month.
Kids, if you want to know what to get your dad for Christmas...
While we’re discussing Taiwan’s first domestically manufactured submarine today, let’s not forget to include in our discussion the commemorative liquor produced for the submarine program to date https://twitter.com/brianhioe/status/1707302133115297922
That really caught my attention. But it turns out to be, when translated by Google, 'Kinmen 58-degree "Platinum Dragon" premium sorghum wine' which - I am sure quite unfairly - sounds like something from Evelyn Waugh's Scoop. Does anyone know what the stuff is like to drink?
Rocket fuel, appropriately. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaoliang_liquor ...while telling the story of his birth, Li Kao describes kaoliang as "the finest paint thinner and worst wine ever invented"...
Hm! Distilled, and 58 'degree' is actually 58% alcohol. I see that the stuff (in general, not this brand) is allegedly "the finest paint thinner and worst wine ever invented", but that is by a Western writer in some not always very serious books ...
Kids, if you want to know what to get your dad for Christmas...
While we’re discussing Taiwan’s first domestically manufactured submarine today, let’s not forget to include in our discussion the commemorative liquor produced for the submarine program to date https://twitter.com/brianhioe/status/1707302133115297922
That really caught my attention. But it turns out to be, when translated by Google, 'Kinmen 58-degree "Platinum Dragon" premium sorghum wine' which - I am sure quite unfairly - sounds like something from Evelyn Waugh's Scoop. Does anyone know what the stuff is like to drink?
It's a "light aroma" liquor - which means it probably has a similar flavour to Korean soju (pleasantly inoffensive), but with around double the alcohol content.
50:50 abolish minimum wage/national parks I reckon.
The motorist thing has way further to run. Right now, if you make an honest mistake and kill someone when you're driving, or just have a few too many beers before you get behind the wheel, you can end up in big trouble. How is that fair? Why not allow each motorist one pedestrian fatality a year before the police get involved? This is just common sense and British values.
In all seriousness he might contemplate something like introducing a jaywalking law, removing right of way for pedestrians and only making it legal to cross roads at crossing points, where those are provided. They could also bring in a law to make use of cycle lanes compulsory where they are available.
There's a lot they could do if they wanted to pursue a zero-sum game of posing as the motorist's friend by being hostile to all other road users, or all other policy objectives.
Kids, if you want to know what to get your dad for Christmas...
While we’re discussing Taiwan’s first domestically manufactured submarine today, let’s not forget to include in our discussion the commemorative liquor produced for the submarine program to date https://twitter.com/brianhioe/status/1707302133115297922
That really caught my attention. But it turns out to be, when translated by Google, 'Kinmen 58-degree "Platinum Dragon" premium sorghum wine' which - I am sure quite unfairly - sounds like something from Evelyn Waugh's Scoop. Does anyone know what the stuff is like to drink?
It's a "light aroma" liquor - which means it probably has a similar flavour to Korean soju (pleasantly inoffensive), but with around double the alcohol content.
50:50 abolish minimum wage/national parks I reckon.
National parks would be more likely - he doesn't want to touch anything close to actual economics.
Since he's concentrating on absolute trivia, perhaps there might be something around dogshit? Funding a national squad of Dogshit Detectives to go after people who don't pick up after their pets?
Or go the other way and appeal to boomer nostalgia: vote Tory to bring back white dogshit.
I must admit I was amused by the concept of Sunak making hard decisions.
But I think it's going to be pretty hard for him to carry on coming up with a dog-whistle gimmick a week between now and the election - whenever it is.
The "inaction man" line really stung.
Starmer is just sitting back and watching him writhe.
Hmmm. I assume that was PMQs? I follow politics (I post here after all) but hadn’t heard that, and haven’t seen PMQs in years. As ever, it’s only about morale in the House.
Yeah, two weeks ago. Starmer was tying together threads on ignoring warnings about RAAC in schools, and sitting on investigations into interference by China.
At the time, it did feel like it was just another moderately good line that wouldn't resonate beyond PMQs. But Sunak appears to have taken quite personal exception to it - his spin doctors were trying to push a "man of action" rebuttal later that day and the torrent of trivial announcements started very soon after.
I wonder if we might look back at it as being an obvious turning point.
It's not a great line in itself but the impact going forward is genius. Sunak has to respond immediately to any topic lest he is branded with it at every PMQs till the election.
If Starmer is smart, he might find a way to contrast Sunak's behaviour before and after. Something like Vince Cable's "from Stalin to Mr Bean" line about Gordon Brown.
50:50 abolish minimum wage/national parks I reckon.
National parks would be more likely - he doesn't want to touch anything close to actual economics.
Since he's concentrating on absolute trivia, perhaps there might be something around dogshit? Funding a national squad of Dogshit Detectives to go after people who don't pick up after their pets?
Or go the other way and appeal to boomer nostalgia: vote Tory to bring back white dogshit.
I must admit I was amused by the concept of Sunak making hard decisions.
But I think it's going to be pretty hard for him to carry on coming up with a dog-whistle gimmick a week between now and the election - whenever it is.
Some further constraints.
Any announcements can't cost actual money, because the whole narrative is that the government doesn't have any money.
Furthermore, the UK can blow rasperries at the EU, but can't do anything substantively Brexity/ECHRxity. Windsor Agreement has seen to that.
That rules out a lot, and the things it leaves risk becoming very samey after a while.
Still, perhaps the public chess board initiative can be extended to other games - draughts being an obvious one to combat accusations of elitism. Backgammon, Mahjong (if he can get anything so unBritish past the Home Secretary), dominoes, Monopoly, Cluedo (obviously dependent on negotiations with the rights holders), Royal Game of Ur and so on.
I regret to inform you all that both Nigel and Malcolm are at it. Again
Only returning the SCUMBAG in kind. He has been told many times to F**K OFF and not post insults about me but the SCUMBAG excuse pretending to be a human has not the intellect to understand that.
Kids, if you want to know what to get your dad for Christmas...
While we’re discussing Taiwan’s first domestically manufactured submarine today, let’s not forget to include in our discussion the commemorative liquor produced for the submarine program to date https://twitter.com/brianhioe/status/1707302133115297922
That really caught my attention. But it turns out to be, when translated by Google, 'Kinmen 58-degree "Platinum Dragon" premium sorghum wine' which - I am sure quite unfairly - sounds like something from Evelyn Waugh's Scoop. Does anyone know what the stuff is like to drink?
It's a "light aroma" liquor - which means it probably has a similar flavour to Korean soju (pleasantly inoffensive), but with around double the alcohol content.
The “British values speed limit” thing does carry the strong whiff of decomposition. This is a government rotting in office. Like a dead pilot slumped over the altimeter
And the worse it gets, the more likely they are to cling on until Autumn 2024 or Winter 2025. Self reinforcing doom loop.
Bad as the last days of Brown and Major were, I don't recall them being this bad. Maybe Rishi can't pick up on the "you're going to lose when you have the election, so the best thing to do is to forget the electioneering and go for the things that are just the right things to do" vibes.
50:50 abolish minimum wage/national parks I reckon.
The motorist thing has way further to run. Right now, if you make an honest mistake and kill someone when you're driving, or just have a few too many beers before you get behind the wheel, you can end up in big trouble. How is that fair? Why not allow each motorist one pedestrian fatality a year before the police get involved? This is just common sense and British values.
In all seriousness he might contemplate something like introducing a jaywalking law, removing right of way for pedestrians and only making it legal to cross roads at crossing points, where those are provided. They could also bring in a law to make use of cycle lanes compulsory where they are available.
There's a lot they could do if they wanted to pursue a zero-sum game of posing as the motorist's friend by being hostile to all other road users, or all other policy objectives.
Jaywalking would fit with his American instincts. They could even play it off as a safety thing.
Let's see how far BR's defence of personal freedom will stretch...
I think we should agree what 'Labour landslide' means so that punditry can be properly evaluated against the outcome.
For me it means an overall majority of 75 or higher.
For me it's a hundred or more. Blair 2005 at 66 seats was not described as a landslide, Boris 2019 at 80 seats was described as a landslide, so your defn may be the popular one.
Still wrong, tho... 😀
Back in the real world Sir K will probably be under an overall majority, and will hope he only needs LD support and not SNP etc as well.
The Tories lose control of events is they lose 40+ seats. Labour need 123 for a majority. The boggy middle ground is huge. I think there is a 60+% we will be in that area.
Keeping the maths ridiculously simple, if Labour gain 45 seats form the Tories and no other change, the Tories lose control of events (320 seats) but Labour have only 247 seats. This would be fascinating, and some such picture is not impossible.
In that case the DUP becomes important again. A pity. However a few more non-Tory seats and they’ll return to the anonymity they deserve. Trouble is, of course, that Labour will have to rely on a rainbow coalition of support.
Yes. The most interesting element of the 2024 election is how few seats the Tories have to lose to lose control, and how few Labour have to win to have a decent prospect of gaining control.
The Tories lose control, though not all hope, if they lose 41 seats - making them 324. They almost certainly lose all hope if they lose 51 seats, making them 314.
They can lose this number by losing 20 to the LDs and 31 to Labour. Labour then have 233 seats, Tories have 314 and SFAICS Labour would lead the (extremely rainbow) government.
This starkly contrasts with the 123 seats Labour need for an absolute majority.
All my figures can be out by one or two, but the principle remains. I suggest that this element will make the 2024 election particularly fascinating as the polls tighten.
The second scenario of an extremely rainbow coalition that you raise is an intriguing one. It strikes me that it couldn't realistically last more than six months, and I question if either Starmer or Sunak would fight the subsequent election as a party leader. Sunak would have lost the keys to Number 10 and quite a few rivals would fancy taking it on, while Starmer would look like little more than a caretaker and, having fallen significantly short of expectations and of a real mandate, would be under great pressure to make way too.
If Starmer wins fewer than the 262 seats won by Corbyn's Labour in 2017 then it would be a major humiliation for him.
Starmer's entire reason for being is to do what Corbyn couldn't do and win the election.
Ancient history never was my strong point, but didn't Jezza win a paltry 202 seats in 2019?
Kids, if you want to know what to get your dad for Christmas...
While we’re discussing Taiwan’s first domestically manufactured submarine today, let’s not forget to include in our discussion the commemorative liquor produced for the submarine program to date https://twitter.com/brianhioe/status/1707302133115297922
That really caught my attention. But it turns out to be, when translated by Google, 'Kinmen 58-degree "Platinum Dragon" premium sorghum wine' which - I am sure quite unfairly - sounds like something from Evelyn Waugh's Scoop. Does anyone know what the stuff is like to drink?
It's a "light aroma" liquor - which means it probably has a similar flavour to Korean soju (pleasantly inoffensive), but with around double the alcohol content.
Are you still in Korea?
The turning point of a career In Korea Being insincere
Of course, from Ukraine and the west's perspective, this is bad news. It is a sign that Russia is willing to go increasingly far in order to get some form of pyrrhic 'victory'.
From Russia's point of view, it is an utter disaster. Spending countless billions on machines that will get blown up in Ukraine; on sending more men into an unnecessary meat grinder, instead of investing in things that would actually make Russia stronkier, such as industry, education and infrastructure.
This is not 1942; it is not a war for Russia's existence. If the war was to end tomorrow, Russia would remain.
Winter fuel allowance could change and apparently no 10 is also looking at cutting working age benefits so that they can dish out tax cuts .
Rob from the poorest to give tax cuts . What an absolute cesspit this government is .
There is scope with winter fuel allowance - why do my parents get it? Dad, after 30 years police service and retirement nearly thirty years ago, is taking home almost as much as me when you add police pension and state pension. He has no mortgage.
They use the money to fund watching rugby. They. Do Not. Need. It.
You can argue that making it means tested is inefficient, but I think it needs to happen.
I think we should agree what 'Labour landslide' means so that punditry can be properly evaluated against the outcome.
For me it means an overall majority of 75 or higher.
For me it's a hundred or more. Blair 2005 at 66 seats was not described as a landslide, Boris 2019 at 80 seats was described as a landslide, so your defn may be the popular one.
Still wrong, tho... 😀
Back in the real world Sir K will probably be under an overall majority, and will hope he only needs LD support and not SNP etc as well.
The Tories lose control of events is they lose 40+ seats. Labour need 123 for a majority. The boggy middle ground is huge. I think there is a 60+% we will be in that area.
Keeping the maths ridiculously simple, if Labour gain 45 seats form the Tories and no other change, the Tories lose control of events (320 seats) but Labour have only 247 seats. This would be fascinating, and some such picture is not impossible.
In that case the DUP becomes important again. A pity. However a few more non-Tory seats and they’ll return to the anonymity they deserve. Trouble is, of course, that Labour will have to rely on a rainbow coalition of support.
Yes. The most interesting element of the 2024 election is how few seats the Tories have to lose to lose control, and how few Labour have to win to have a decent prospect of gaining control.
The Tories lose control, though not all hope, if they lose 41 seats - making them 324. They almost certainly lose all hope if they lose 51 seats, making them 314.
They can lose this number by losing 20 to the LDs and 31 to Labour. Labour then have 233 seats, Tories have 314 and SFAICS Labour would lead the (extremely rainbow) government.
This starkly contrasts with the 123 seats Labour need for an absolute majority.
All my figures can be out by one or two, but the principle remains. I suggest that this element will make the 2024 election particularly fascinating as the polls tighten.
The second scenario of an extremely rainbow coalition that you raise is an intriguing one. It strikes me that it couldn't realistically last more than six months, and I question if either Starmer or Sunak would fight the subsequent election as a party leader. Sunak would have lost the keys to Number 10 and quite a few rivals would fancy taking it on, while Starmer would look like little more than a caretaker and, having fallen significantly short of expectations and of a real mandate, would be under great pressure to make way too.
I don't think the extremely rainbow coalition would happen in practice. It would be an equally unstable Labour-led minority government made up of Lab+Lib+Alliance/SDLP+Green but excluding the SNP and (probably) PC. They would work on the basis the SNP dare not bring the government down for fear of being labelled Tartan Tories again. The Tories would have a field day. There would be another election in a few months, which would quite possibly result in another hung parliament.
I'm not sure there would be any coalition at all in that situation.
Having a coalition is only really worth it if it gives you a working majority (as in 2010). Then the participants can sensibly come up with a coalition agreement where you sketch out a programme for the next four or five years, where you get some of the things you want, and sacrifice other things.
But if the SNP weren't getting involved then, on those numbers, there is no arrangement that would give Labour the sort of numbers to meaningfully offer anything, or any real hope of stumbling on to anything like full term - everything would be subject to a negotiation with the SNP or, less likely, with a group of Tories. Then it's just Labour offering Lib Dems imaginary legislation that can't possibly get through, and Lib Dems offering to support stuff but without anything like the numbers to get it over the line.
I'm not really sure there is a coalition agreement of any kind to be made there with the remaining parties. So Davey and others would most likely just say Starmer can come in as caretaker because the Tories need removing and someone has to do it, but essentially it's a holding position for a fresh election within months.
Sunak is being pushed down the Hague route, of being persuaded, by people he can’t stand up to by dint of inexperience, to attempt to shore up his base with a mix of dog whistle policies and gimmickery.
He had the chance to become the grown up in the room, after the Tories inflicted first Johnson then Truss upon us all, but has flunked it.
1) Not everyone is a motorist. Roughly 25% to 33% of households in the the "red wall" don't have access to one at all. I'm not sure if those people are likely swing voters - they tend to be poorer, higher rates of disability, younger or older... dunno.
2) Motorists are also cyclists, pedestrians, users of public transport. The effectiveness of the wedge depends on those who consider themselves primarily or exclusively motorists.
3) The STATS19 data for 2022 just came out. Labour could use that - 30,000 dead or seriously injured on our roads last year. (Plus, sadly, this coach crash)
4) It's a truth universally acknowledged that public transport outside London has seen woeful under-investment, now including HS2. This could be seen as a cheap ploy to distract from that. Most people commute by car by necessity rather than preference, as we see from the popularity of comprehensive public transport networks where they exist.
5) Age. There are stunning breakdowns of just how poorly the Conservatives are doing with under-50s. For young families, there are local concerns about driving around schools that Labour could "weaponise". For younger people, car ownership, licenses etc are at all time low after the pandemic, exacerbating a long-term trend. This policy might work in the short term, but in 2029, 2034?
1) So between two thirds to three quarters are motorists, and many of those in the smaller minority who aren't will be passengers quite often too. So yes by your own figures we should be investing in infrastructure.
2) And by the same logic cyclists, pedestrians and users of public transport are motorists too. So again, invest in infrastructure.
3) Our roads are remarkably safe, as those figures demonstrate. Billions of journeys made annually, but the risk of an accident is thankfully miniscule and has almost never been smaller.
4) It's a truth universally acknowledged that our road infrastructure nationwide has seen woeful under investment. The last major motorways to be built were half a century ago. Most people commute by car by choice as is shown where comprehensive public transport and smooth operating open roads are available, people choose the cars.
5) Yes many young families need to get their kids to school by car. Anyone who took an anti-parent weaponisation seeking to harm bringing kids to school would be on a hiding to nothing.
I always fail to see why so many parents use cars for what, in my youth, was a walk- or cycle-able journey. In our youth both my wife and I, at opposite ends of the country, walked around a mile to primary school. My wife, by the time she was about 7, was considered responsible enough to lead several younger children from the part of the estate where they lived, to school.
For very good reasons. Eg
1: Parents/pupils want a choice to go to good schools, not just be dumped in the closest school they can happen to walk to. If driving past a school you don't like allows you to help your kids education, that's a price well worth paying in my eyes.
2: People are more wary of letting kids be unsupervised in public nowadays, whether justified or not, because of too many stories of people harming kids etc. I wouldn't let my kids walk to or play in the park next to our estate unsupervised which doesn't even involved crossing any roads, let alone much further, to school.
And probably most importantly 3: Both parents in most families nowadays work so can't simply walk to a school and back home, they need to drop the kids off at school then continue their drive to get to their place of work. Dropping kids off at 8:45am and being at work for 9am is easier with a car.
'Back in the day' when mum walked the kids to school is easier if mum didn't have to go to work.
It is not compulsory
Well, it kind of is. Supporting three or four people on a median salary is, I would say, almost impossible.
Choice of lifestyle and location more like or choice of work etc.
Let's say you earn £1500 a month after tax. £800 of that goes in housing, £200 on groceries, £200 on utilities, £100 on transport costs (conservatively) - that leaves you £200 a month on 'lifestyle' - that includes clothing everyone, repairs and replacenents, holidays, rainy day saving, saving for a pension. Feel free to tell me any of my costs are out but I'd argue that managing all this is almost impossible.
On that amount I agree
The median salary is £27500 , this translates in to take home pay at £1890 per month. £1500 is minimum wage, more like.
The “British values speed limit” thing does carry the strong whiff of decomposition. This is a government rotting in office. Like a dead pilot slumped over the altimeter
Someone told him to say "ordinary families" every time he answers a question, and follow it up with "the values of the British people" so he ends saying crap like certain speed limits are against the values of the British people. What a wally!
I think we should agree what 'Labour landslide' means so that punditry can be properly evaluated against the outcome.
For me it means an overall majority of 75 or higher.
For me it's a hundred or more. Blair 2005 at 66 seats was not described as a landslide, Boris 2019 at 80 seats was described as a landslide, so your defn may be the popular one.
Still wrong, tho... 😀
Back in the real world Sir K will probably be under an overall majority, and will hope he only needs LD support and not SNP etc as well.
The Tories lose control of events is they lose 40+ seats. Labour need 123 for a majority. The boggy middle ground is huge. I think there is a 60+% we will be in that area.
Keeping the maths ridiculously simple, if Labour gain 45 seats form the Tories and no other change, the Tories lose control of events (320 seats) but Labour have only 247 seats. This would be fascinating, and some such picture is not impossible.
In that case the DUP becomes important again. A pity. However a few more non-Tory seats and they’ll return to the anonymity they deserve. Trouble is, of course, that Labour will have to rely on a rainbow coalition of support.
Yes. The most interesting element of the 2024 election is how few seats the Tories have to lose to lose control, and how few Labour have to win to have a decent prospect of gaining control.
The Tories lose control, though not all hope, if they lose 41 seats - making them 324. They almost certainly lose all hope if they lose 51 seats, making them 314.
They can lose this number by losing 20 to the LDs and 31 to Labour. Labour then have 233 seats, Tories have 314 and SFAICS Labour would lead the (extremely rainbow) government.
This starkly contrasts with the 123 seats Labour need for an absolute majority.
All my figures can be out by one or two, but the principle remains. I suggest that this element will make the 2024 election particularly fascinating as the polls tighten.
The second scenario of an extremely rainbow coalition that you raise is an intriguing one. It strikes me that it couldn't realistically last more than six months, and I question if either Starmer or Sunak would fight the subsequent election as a party leader. Sunak would have lost the keys to Number 10 and quite a few rivals would fancy taking it on, while Starmer would look like little more than a caretaker and, having fallen significantly short of expectations and of a real mandate, would be under great pressure to make way too.
I don't think the extremely rainbow coalition would happen in practice. It would be an equally unstable Labour-led minority government made up of Lab+Lib+Alliance/SDLP+Green but excluding the SNP and (probably) PC. They would work on the basis the SNP dare not bring the government down for fear of being labelled Tartan Tories again. The Tories would have a field day. There would be another election in a few months, which would quite possibly result in another hung parliament.
I'm not sure there would be any coalition at all in that situation.
Having a coalition is only really worth it if it gives you a working majority (as in 2010). Then the participants can sensibly come up with a coalition agreement where you sketch out a programme for the next four or five years, where you get some of the things you want, and sacrifice other things.
But if the SNP weren't getting involved then, on those numbers, there is no arrangement that would give Labour the sort of numbers to meaningfully offer anything, or any real hope of stumbling on to anything like full term - everything would be subject to a negotiation with the SNP or, less likely, with a group of Tories. Then it's just Labour offering Lib Dems imaginary legislation that can't possibly get through, and Lib Dems offering to support stuff but without anything like the numbers to get it over the line.
I'm not really sure there is a coalition agreement of any kind to be made there with the remaining parties. So Davey and others would most likely just say Starmer can come in as caretaker because the Tories need removing and someone has to do it, but essentially it's a holding position for a fresh election within months.
If, say, Labour won 300 seats, to 30 for the Lib Dems, 30 for the SNP, 2 5for Others, with 265 Conservatives, then SKS could easily form a minority government, because no one would vote with the Conservatives, against him.
1) Not everyone is a motorist. Roughly 25% to 33% of households in the the "red wall" don't have access to one at all. I'm not sure if those people are likely swing voters - they tend to be poorer, higher rates of disability, younger or older... dunno.
2) Motorists are also cyclists, pedestrians, users of public transport. The effectiveness of the wedge depends on those who consider themselves primarily or exclusively motorists.
3) The STATS19 data for 2022 just came out. Labour could use that - 30,000 dead or seriously injured on our roads last year. (Plus, sadly, this coach crash)
4) It's a truth universally acknowledged that public transport outside London has seen woeful under-investment, now including HS2. This could be seen as a cheap ploy to distract from that. Most people commute by car by necessity rather than preference, as we see from the popularity of comprehensive public transport networks where they exist.
5) Age. There are stunning breakdowns of just how poorly the Conservatives are doing with under-50s. For young families, there are local concerns about driving around schools that Labour could "weaponise". For younger people, car ownership, licenses etc are at all time low after the pandemic, exacerbating a long-term trend. This policy might work in the short term, but in 2029, 2034?
1) So between two thirds to three quarters are motorists, and many of those in the smaller minority who aren't will be passengers quite often too. So yes by your own figures we should be investing in infrastructure.
2) And by the same logic cyclists, pedestrians and users of public transport are motorists too. So again, invest in infrastructure.
3) Our roads are remarkably safe, as those figures demonstrate. Billions of journeys made annually, but the risk of an accident is thankfully miniscule and has almost never been smaller.
4) It's a truth universally acknowledged that our road infrastructure nationwide has seen woeful under investment. The last major motorways to be built were half a century ago. Most people commute by car by choice as is shown where comprehensive public transport and smooth operating open roads are available, people choose the cars.
5) Yes many young families need to get their kids to school by car. Anyone who took an anti-parent weaponisation seeking to harm bringing kids to school would be on a hiding to nothing.
I always fail to see why so many parents use cars for what, in my youth, was a walk- or cycle-able journey. In our youth both my wife and I, at opposite ends of the country, walked around a mile to primary school. My wife, by the time she was about 7, was considered responsible enough to lead several younger children from the part of the estate where they lived, to school.
For very good reasons. Eg
1: Parents/pupils want a choice to go to good schools, not just be dumped in the closest school they can happen to walk to. If driving past a school you don't like allows you to help your kids education, that's a price well worth paying in my eyes.
2: People are more wary of letting kids be unsupervised in public nowadays, whether justified or not, because of too many stories of people harming kids etc. I wouldn't let my kids walk to or play in the park next to our estate unsupervised which doesn't even involved crossing any roads, let alone much further, to school.
And probably most importantly 3: Both parents in most families nowadays work so can't simply walk to a school and back home, they need to drop the kids off at school then continue their drive to get to their place of work. Dropping kids off at 8:45am and being at work for 9am is easier with a car.
'Back in the day' when mum walked the kids to school is easier if mum didn't have to go to work.
It is not compulsory
Well, it kind of is. Supporting three or four people on a median salary is, I would say, almost impossible.
Choice of lifestyle and location more like or choice of work etc.
Let's say you earn £1500 a month after tax. £800 of that goes in housing, £200 on groceries, £200 on utilities, £100 on transport costs (conservatively) - that leaves you £200 a month on 'lifestyle' - that includes clothing everyone, repairs and replacenents, holidays, rainy day saving, saving for a pension. Feel free to tell me any of my costs are out but I'd argue that managing all this is almost impossible.
On that amount I agree
The median salary is £27500 , this translates in to take home pay at £1890 per month. £1500 is minimum wage, more like.
I still don't think you could make it through the month trying to support a family on £1890.
I think we should agree what 'Labour landslide' means so that punditry can be properly evaluated against the outcome.
For me it means an overall majority of 75 or higher.
For me it's a hundred or more. Blair 2005 at 66 seats was not described as a landslide, Boris 2019 at 80 seats was described as a landslide, so your defn may be the popular one.
Still wrong, tho... 😀
Back in the real world Sir K will probably be under an overall majority, and will hope he only needs LD support and not SNP etc as well.
The Tories lose control of events is they lose 40+ seats. Labour need 123 for a majority. The boggy middle ground is huge. I think there is a 60+% we will be in that area.
Keeping the maths ridiculously simple, if Labour gain 45 seats form the Tories and no other change, the Tories lose control of events (320 seats) but Labour have only 247 seats. This would be fascinating, and some such picture is not impossible.
In that case the DUP becomes important again. A pity. However a few more non-Tory seats and they’ll return to the anonymity they deserve. Trouble is, of course, that Labour will have to rely on a rainbow coalition of support.
Yes. The most interesting element of the 2024 election is how few seats the Tories have to lose to lose control, and how few Labour have to win to have a decent prospect of gaining control.
The Tories lose control, though not all hope, if they lose 41 seats - making them 324. They almost certainly lose all hope if they lose 51 seats, making them 314.
They can lose this number by losing 20 to the LDs and 31 to Labour. Labour then have 233 seats, Tories have 314 and SFAICS Labour would lead the (extremely rainbow) government.
This starkly contrasts with the 123 seats Labour need for an absolute majority.
All my figures can be out by one or two, but the principle remains. I suggest that this element will make the 2024 election particularly fascinating as the polls tighten.
The second scenario of an extremely rainbow coalition that you raise is an intriguing one. It strikes me that it couldn't realistically last more than six months, and I question if either Starmer or Sunak would fight the subsequent election as a party leader. Sunak would have lost the keys to Number 10 and quite a few rivals would fancy taking it on, while Starmer would look like little more than a caretaker and, having fallen significantly short of expectations and of a real mandate, would be under great pressure to make way too.
I think Starmer would be safe. It would be like Wilson in 64, with a second election and a safe majority.
That's very different from the sort of numbers being suggested. Wilson actually had a bare majority in 1964 - it was arguably a little disappointing as a result but they'd gained 60 odd seats and were able to govern with a legislative programme he could push through until an opportunity arose for a snap election. I expect that would also happen if Starmer had a bare majority or just short.
On the numbers being floated, though, Labour would be 80+ short of a majority. That's miles off expectations and it isn't just hard to push on for a couple of years but basically impossible.
Sunak is being pushed down the Hague route, of being persuaded, by people he can’t stand up to by dint of inexperience, to attempt to shore up his base with a mix of dog whistle policies and gimmickery.
He had the chance to become the grown up in the room, after the Tories inflicted first Johnson then Truss upon us all, but has flunked it.
Does this mean we can look forward to Sunak wearing a baseball cap backwards and boasting about how many pints he could drink in his youth?
1) Not everyone is a motorist. Roughly 25% to 33% of households in the the "red wall" don't have access to one at all. I'm not sure if those people are likely swing voters - they tend to be poorer, higher rates of disability, younger or older... dunno.
2) Motorists are also cyclists, pedestrians, users of public transport. The effectiveness of the wedge depends on those who consider themselves primarily or exclusively motorists.
3) The STATS19 data for 2022 just came out. Labour could use that - 30,000 dead or seriously injured on our roads last year. (Plus, sadly, this coach crash)
4) It's a truth universally acknowledged that public transport outside London has seen woeful under-investment, now including HS2. This could be seen as a cheap ploy to distract from that. Most people commute by car by necessity rather than preference, as we see from the popularity of comprehensive public transport networks where they exist.
5) Age. There are stunning breakdowns of just how poorly the Conservatives are doing with under-50s. For young families, there are local concerns about driving around schools that Labour could "weaponise". For younger people, car ownership, licenses etc are at all time low after the pandemic, exacerbating a long-term trend. This policy might work in the short term, but in 2029, 2034?
1) So between two thirds to three quarters are motorists, and many of those in the smaller minority who aren't will be passengers quite often too. So yes by your own figures we should be investing in infrastructure.
2) And by the same logic cyclists, pedestrians and users of public transport are motorists too. So again, invest in infrastructure.
3) Our roads are remarkably safe, as those figures demonstrate. Billions of journeys made annually, but the risk of an accident is thankfully miniscule and has almost never been smaller.
4) It's a truth universally acknowledged that our road infrastructure nationwide has seen woeful under investment. The last major motorways to be built were half a century ago. Most people commute by car by choice as is shown where comprehensive public transport and smooth operating open roads are available, people choose the cars.
5) Yes many young families need to get their kids to school by car. Anyone who took an anti-parent weaponisation seeking to harm bringing kids to school would be on a hiding to nothing.
I always fail to see why so many parents use cars for what, in my youth, was a walk- or cycle-able journey. In our youth both my wife and I, at opposite ends of the country, walked around a mile to primary school. My wife, by the time she was about 7, was considered responsible enough to lead several younger children from the part of the estate where they lived, to school.
For very good reasons. Eg
1: Parents/pupils want a choice to go to good schools, not just be dumped in the closest school they can happen to walk to. If driving past a school you don't like allows you to help your kids education, that's a price well worth paying in my eyes.
2: People are more wary of letting kids be unsupervised in public nowadays, whether justified or not, because of too many stories of people harming kids etc. I wouldn't let my kids walk to or play in the park next to our estate unsupervised which doesn't even involved crossing any roads, let alone much further, to school.
And probably most importantly 3: Both parents in most families nowadays work so can't simply walk to a school and back home, they need to drop the kids off at school then continue their drive to get to their place of work. Dropping kids off at 8:45am and being at work for 9am is easier with a car.
'Back in the day' when mum walked the kids to school is easier if mum didn't have to go to work.
It is not compulsory
Well, it kind of is. Supporting three or four people on a median salary is, I would say, almost impossible.
Choice of lifestyle and location more like or choice of work etc.
Let's say you earn £1500 a month after tax. £800 of that goes in housing, £200 on groceries, £200 on utilities, £100 on transport costs (conservatively) - that leaves you £200 a month on 'lifestyle' - that includes clothing everyone, repairs and replacenents, holidays, rainy day saving, saving for a pension. Feel free to tell me any of my costs are out but I'd argue that managing all this is almost impossible.
On that amount I agree
The median salary is £27500 , this translates in to take home pay at £1890 per month. £1500 is minimum wage, more like.
That is the median salary not median full time salary.
50:50 abolish minimum wage/national parks I reckon.
National parks would be more likely - he doesn't want to touch anything close to actual economics.
Since he's concentrating on absolute trivia, perhaps there might be something around dogshit? Funding a national squad of Dogshit Detectives to go after people who don't pick up after their pets?
Or go the other way and appeal to boomer nostalgia: vote Tory to bring back white dogshit.
I must admit I was amused by the concept of Sunak making hard decisions.
But I think it's going to be pretty hard for him to carry on coming up with a dog-whistle gimmick a week between now and the election - whenever it is.
The "inaction man" line really stung.
Starmer is just sitting back and watching him writhe.
Hmmm. I assume that was PMQs? I follow politics (I post here after all) but hadn’t heard that, and haven’t seen PMQs in years. As ever, it’s only about morale in the House.
Yeah, two weeks ago. Starmer was tying together threads on ignoring warnings about RAAC in schools, and sitting on investigations into interference by China.
At the time, it did feel like it was just another moderately good line that wouldn't resonate beyond PMQs. But Sunak appears to have taken quite personal exception to it - his spin doctors were trying to push a "man of action" rebuttal later that day and the torrent of trivial announcements started very soon after.
I wonder if we might look back at it as being an obvious turning point.
Interesting. I hadn’t seen the back story but it does add up.
Of course all Governments struggle with the fact that doing things takes time, whereas Opposition ideas are instant (countered by the fact that they at least can DO things) but rightly or wrongly he comes across as even more cautious. Perhaps extra vulnerable to the “you’ve had 13 years” attack line at the election.
Sunak is being pushed down the Hague route, of being persuaded, by people he can’t stand up to by dint of inexperience, to attempt to shore up his base with a mix of dog whistle policies and gimmickery.
Should we expect a version of Hague's "foreign land" speech at the party conference?
Winter fuel allowance could change and apparently no 10 is also looking at cutting working age benefits so that they can dish out tax cuts .
Rob from the poorest to give tax cuts . What an absolute cesspit this government is .
There is scope with winter fuel allowance - why do my parents get it? Dad, after 30 years police service and retirement nearly thirty years ago, is taking home almost as much as me when you add police pension and state pension. He has no mortgage.
They use the money to fund watching rugby. They. Do Not. Need. It.
You can argue that making it means tested is inefficient, but I think it needs to happen.
The basis of the answer is to charge pensioners full NI, and manoeuvre the tax rate to reclaim this stuff that way. But it’s politically toxic to do so.
1) Not everyone is a motorist. Roughly 25% to 33% of households in the the "red wall" don't have access to one at all. I'm not sure if those people are likely swing voters - they tend to be poorer, higher rates of disability, younger or older... dunno.
2) Motorists are also cyclists, pedestrians, users of public transport. The effectiveness of the wedge depends on those who consider themselves primarily or exclusively motorists.
3) The STATS19 data for 2022 just came out. Labour could use that - 30,000 dead or seriously injured on our roads last year. (Plus, sadly, this coach crash)
4) It's a truth universally acknowledged that public transport outside London has seen woeful under-investment, now including HS2. This could be seen as a cheap ploy to distract from that. Most people commute by car by necessity rather than preference, as we see from the popularity of comprehensive public transport networks where they exist.
5) Age. There are stunning breakdowns of just how poorly the Conservatives are doing with under-50s. For young families, there are local concerns about driving around schools that Labour could "weaponise". For younger people, car ownership, licenses etc are at all time low after the pandemic, exacerbating a long-term trend. This policy might work in the short term, but in 2029, 2034?
1) So between two thirds to three quarters are motorists, and many of those in the smaller minority who aren't will be passengers quite often too. So yes by your own figures we should be investing in infrastructure.
2) And by the same logic cyclists, pedestrians and users of public transport are motorists too. So again, invest in infrastructure.
3) Our roads are remarkably safe, as those figures demonstrate. Billions of journeys made annually, but the risk of an accident is thankfully miniscule and has almost never been smaller.
4) It's a truth universally acknowledged that our road infrastructure nationwide has seen woeful under investment. The last major motorways to be built were half a century ago. Most people commute by car by choice as is shown where comprehensive public transport and smooth operating open roads are available, people choose the cars.
5) Yes many young families need to get their kids to school by car. Anyone who took an anti-parent weaponisation seeking to harm bringing kids to school would be on a hiding to nothing.
I always fail to see why so many parents use cars for what, in my youth, was a walk- or cycle-able journey. In our youth both my wife and I, at opposite ends of the country, walked around a mile to primary school. My wife, by the time she was about 7, was considered responsible enough to lead several younger children from the part of the estate where they lived, to school.
For very good reasons. Eg
1: Parents/pupils want a choice to go to good schools, not just be dumped in the closest school they can happen to walk to. If driving past a school you don't like allows you to help your kids education, that's a price well worth paying in my eyes.
2: People are more wary of letting kids be unsupervised in public nowadays, whether justified or not, because of too many stories of people harming kids etc. I wouldn't let my kids walk to or play in the park next to our estate unsupervised which doesn't even involved crossing any roads, let alone much further, to school.
And probably most importantly 3: Both parents in most families nowadays work so can't simply walk to a school and back home, they need to drop the kids off at school then continue their drive to get to their place of work. Dropping kids off at 8:45am and being at work for 9am is easier with a car.
'Back in the day' when mum walked the kids to school is easier if mum didn't have to go to work.
It is not compulsory
Well, it kind of is. Supporting three or four people on a median salary is, I would say, almost impossible.
Choice of lifestyle and location more like or choice of work etc.
Let's say you earn £1500 a month after tax. £800 of that goes in housing, £200 on groceries, £200 on utilities, £100 on transport costs (conservatively) - that leaves you £200 a month on 'lifestyle' - that includes clothing everyone, repairs and replacenents, holidays, rainy day saving, saving for a pension. Feel free to tell me any of my costs are out but I'd argue that managing all this is almost impossible.
On that amount I agree
The median salary is £27500 , this translates in to take home pay at £1890 per month. £1500 is minimum wage, more like.
I still don't think you could make it through the month trying to support a family on £1890.
You'd get various credits if that was your full time familial income I think.
I think we should agree what 'Labour landslide' means so that punditry can be properly evaluated against the outcome.
For me it means an overall majority of 75 or higher.
For me it's a hundred or more. Blair 2005 at 66 seats was not described as a landslide, Boris 2019 at 80 seats was described as a landslide, so your defn may be the popular one.
Still wrong, tho... 😀
Back in the real world Sir K will probably be under an overall majority, and will hope he only needs LD support and not SNP etc as well.
The Tories lose control of events is they lose 40+ seats. Labour need 123 for a majority. The boggy middle ground is huge. I think there is a 60+% we will be in that area.
Keeping the maths ridiculously simple, if Labour gain 45 seats form the Tories and no other change, the Tories lose control of events (320 seats) but Labour have only 247 seats. This would be fascinating, and some such picture is not impossible.
In that case the DUP becomes important again. A pity. However a few more non-Tory seats and they’ll return to the anonymity they deserve. Trouble is, of course, that Labour will have to rely on a rainbow coalition of support.
Yes. The most interesting element of the 2024 election is how few seats the Tories have to lose to lose control, and how few Labour have to win to have a decent prospect of gaining control.
The Tories lose control, though not all hope, if they lose 41 seats - making them 324. They almost certainly lose all hope if they lose 51 seats, making them 314.
They can lose this number by losing 20 to the LDs and 31 to Labour. Labour then have 233 seats, Tories have 314 and SFAICS Labour would lead the (extremely rainbow) government.
This starkly contrasts with the 123 seats Labour need for an absolute majority.
All my figures can be out by one or two, but the principle remains. I suggest that this element will make the 2024 election particularly fascinating as the polls tighten.
The second scenario of an extremely rainbow coalition that you raise is an intriguing one. It strikes me that it couldn't realistically last more than six months, and I question if either Starmer or Sunak would fight the subsequent election as a party leader. Sunak would have lost the keys to Number 10 and quite a few rivals would fancy taking it on, while Starmer would look like little more than a caretaker and, having fallen significantly short of expectations and of a real mandate, would be under great pressure to make way too.
I don't think the extremely rainbow coalition would happen in practice. It would be an equally unstable Labour-led minority government made up of Lab+Lib+Alliance/SDLP+Green but excluding the SNP and (probably) PC. They would work on the basis the SNP dare not bring the government down for fear of being labelled Tartan Tories again. The Tories would have a field day. There would be another election in a few months, which would quite possibly result in another hung parliament.
I'm not sure there would be any coalition at all in that situation.
Having a coalition is only really worth it if it gives you a working majority (as in 2010). Then the participants can sensibly come up with a coalition agreement where you sketch out a programme for the next four or five years, where you get some of the things you want, and sacrifice other things.
But if the SNP weren't getting involved then, on those numbers, there is no arrangement that would give Labour the sort of numbers to meaningfully offer anything, or any real hope of stumbling on to anything like full term - everything would be subject to a negotiation with the SNP or, less likely, with a group of Tories. Then it's just Labour offering Lib Dems imaginary legislation that can't possibly get through, and Lib Dems offering to support stuff but without anything like the numbers to get it over the line.
I'm not really sure there is a coalition agreement of any kind to be made there with the remaining parties. So Davey and others would most likely just say Starmer can come in as caretaker because the Tories need removing and someone has to do it, but essentially it's a holding position for a fresh election within months.
If, say, Labour won 300 seats, to 30 for the Lib Dems, 30 for the SNP, 2 5for Others, with 265 Conservatives, then SKS could easily form a minority government, because no one would vote with the Conservatives, against him.
In my head the magic number is around 300. Below that and however the balance is made up, you’re in hell as PM because multiple overlapping coalitions outvote you (including bits of your own party) and you can’t please everyone.
50:50 abolish minimum wage/national parks I reckon.
The motorist thing has way further to run. Right now, if you make an honest mistake and kill someone when you're driving, or just have a few too many beers before you get behind the wheel, you can end up in big trouble. How is that fair? Why not allow each motorist one pedestrian fatality a year before the police get involved? This is just common sense and British values.
Can children and pensioners please count as half? They pay much less tax. I would hate to think I would go over my allocation by smearing a couple of low-value people.
Only just realised that the Tories usually have their conference last, but aren't for a very boring reason that the Guardian helpfully explains:
"It would be nice to learn that some arcane constitutional principle was in play, and that Simon Case, the cabinet secretary, had intervened to declare that the Conservatives were no longer entitled to the final slot (often the best one, in most presentational contexts) on grounds of fairness (or perhaps as a sanction for uselessness). Sadly, the answer is a lot more boring.
The main UK parties have staged their conferences with the Liberals first, Labour next and the Conservatives last since the 1950s. It has run like this regardless of who was in government.
But several years ago Labour wanted to make a block booking for the ACC conference centre in Liverpool over multiple years. That was fine, but the week they wanted for 2023 was already booked, and so Labour asked the other parties if they would be happy to switch. And they agreed.
Sorry. It’s not much of a tale. But it does show the parties can agree on some things."
50:50 abolish minimum wage/national parks I reckon.
The motorist thing has way further to run. Right now, if you make an honest mistake and kill someone when you're driving, or just have a few too many beers before you get behind the wheel, you can end up in big trouble. How is that fair? Why not allow each motorist one pedestrian fatality a year before the police get involved? This is just common sense and British values.
In all seriousness he might contemplate something like introducing a jaywalking law, removing right of way for pedestrians and only making it legal to cross roads at crossing points, where those are provided. They could also bring in a law to make use of cycle lanes compulsory where they are available.
There's a lot they could do if they wanted to pursue a zero-sum game of posing as the motorist's friend by being hostile to all other road users, or all other policy objectives.
Jaywalking would fit with his American instincts. They could even play it off as a safety thing.
Let's see how far BR's defence of personal freedom will stretch...
Jaywalking and the rest of what were suggested are all batshit crazy, authoritarian, illiberal, stupid ideas. I oppose them all.
50:50 abolish minimum wage/national parks I reckon.
The motorist thing has way further to run. Right now, if you make an honest mistake and kill someone when you're driving, or just have a few too many beers before you get behind the wheel, you can end up in big trouble. How is that fair? Why not allow each motorist one pedestrian fatality a year before the police get involved? This is just common sense and British values.
Can children and pensioners please count as half? They pay much less tax. I would hate to think I would go over my allocation by smearing a couple of low-value people.
One of the oddities of the post 7-bins polls has been a pretty meagre performance by the Greens. Exactly the opposite of what I expected. I thought the salience of net zero as an issue would give them a boost of 2 or 3%.
50:50 abolish minimum wage/national parks I reckon.
National parks would be more likely - he doesn't want to touch anything close to actual economics.
Since he's concentrating on absolute trivia, perhaps there might be something around dogshit? Funding a national squad of Dogshit Detectives to go after people who don't pick up after their pets?
Or go the other way and appeal to boomer nostalgia: vote Tory to bring back white dogshit.
I must admit I was amused by the concept of Sunak making hard decisions.
But I think it's going to be pretty hard for him to carry on coming up with a dog-whistle gimmick a week between now and the election - whenever it is.
Some further constraints.
Any announcements can't cost actual money, because the whole narrative is that the government doesn't have any money.
Furthermore, the UK can blow rasperries at the EU, but can't do anything substantively Brexity/ECHRxity. Windsor Agreement has seen to that.
That rules out a lot, and the things it leaves risk becoming very samey after a while.
Still, perhaps the public chess board initiative can be extended to other games - draughts being an obvious one to combat accusations of elitism. Backgammon, Mahjong (if he can get anything so unBritish past the Home Secretary), dominoes, Monopoly, Cluedo (obviously dependent on negotiations with the rights holders), Royal Game of Ur and so on.
I've just been looking at Parish Council responsibilities to see if there's anything there that Rishi might want to stick his nose into.
Allotments - discounts for pensioners? Burial Grounds - ditto. Challenge Labour to match the pledge, scream about death taxes if they don't Bus Shelters - get rid Clocks - levelling-up funds to be diverted to paying for new town clocks in every marginal constituency Footpaths - ignore Gifts - yes please Litter - national litter-picking service, with all 16-25 year olds required to spend 4 hours each week picking litter. No expenses to be paid Postal and Telecommunication facilities - Internet providers will be required to sponsor red telephone boxes in every Tory-voting village Public conveniences - ban trans and non-binary people Rights of way - abolish Seats (public) - national campaign to increase sponsorship. Require that they all incorporate anti-loitering features. Traffic calming - concentrate on traffic enragement instead War memorials - make poppies compulsory for all
The “British values speed limit” thing does carry the strong whiff of decomposition. This is a government rotting in office. Like a dead pilot slumped over the altimeter
Did we find out if teh 16 year old tree feller was anti-pensioners and just wanted to build a house.
Winter fuel allowance could change and apparently no 10 is also looking at cutting working age benefits so that they can dish out tax cuts .
Rob from the poorest to give tax cuts . What an absolute cesspit this government is .
There is scope with winter fuel allowance - why do my parents get it? Dad, after 30 years police service and retirement nearly thirty years ago, is taking home almost as much as me when you add police pension and state pension. He has no mortgage.
They use the money to fund watching rugby. They. Do Not. Need. It.
You can argue that making it means tested is inefficient, but I think it needs to happen.
The basis of the answer is to charge pensioners full NI, and manoeuvre the tax rate to reclaim this stuff that way. But it’s politically toxic to do so.
Ha Ha Ha , the losers on here always blame everything on pensioners. Poor sods paid 50 years to get a pittance yet the lazy young would hav ethem beggared.
Regarding Schools. I took my son out of school in the UK at age 7 earlier this year and enrolled him in to school in Finland. The school in Finland is completely open, anyone can walk in and out of it. The kids all walk to and from school by themselves from age 7 onwards. They are encouraged to by the school. You can't actually take the car to drop your kids off at school, you are forbidden to park anywhere. This is just outside a city center. The roads all have seperate footpaths, cycle paths, safe crossings etc. Around our house there are forests, cliffs, rocks, playgrounds etc, the kids just roam around freely. In the end, this is all a choice; as a parent I consider the benefits far outweigh the risks of this situation. Parents and schools in the UK should be able to make the same decisions.
The “British values speed limit” thing does carry the strong whiff of decomposition. This is a government rotting in office. Like a dead pilot slumped over the altimeter
As well as that nonsense in the last few weeks we've had a proposed dog breed ban of a breed we can't define, a plan to build not even half but a third of HS2, a plan to allow ICE cars to be sold until 2035 even though manufacturers will effectively be obliged to phase them out before then, and I'm sure I've forgotten some other stupid ideas from No. 10.
*edit* Meat and bin nonsense. Stupid ideas are coming so fast it's hard to keep up.
A year more of this and we will be positively reevaluating Liz Truss's reign.
God knows what is going on in government that this pile of tripe sounds like a good idea to the whiz kids.
50:50 abolish minimum wage/national parks I reckon.
The motorist thing has way further to run. Right now, if you make an honest mistake and kill someone when you're driving, or just have a few too many beers before you get behind the wheel, you can end up in big trouble. How is that fair? Why not allow each motorist one pedestrian fatality a year before the police get involved? This is just common sense and British values.
Can children and pensioners please count as half? They pay much less tax. I would hate to think I would go over my allocation by smearing a couple of low-value people.
I pay a hell of a lot of tax so your ideas are a bit wooly.
Comments
But I think it's going to be pretty hard for him to carry on coming up with a dog-whistle gimmick a week between now and the election - whenever it is.
Do you think that being pro-motorist (which I don't think Sunak is being, if he was we'd have some investment and cut taxes on motoring) is "gammon-bait"?
Do you think the two thirds of people who commute to work by car, or the countless stretched parents who seek to drop kids off at school by car then be at work themselves, etc, are all gammons?
Starmer is just sitting back and watching him writhe.
While we’re discussing Taiwan’s first domestically manufactured submarine today, let’s not forget to include in our discussion the commemorative liquor produced for the submarine program to date
https://twitter.com/brianhioe/status/1707302133115297922
If you think Sunak merely not being hostile to drivers and pledging to do the bare minimum of maintaining roads, not even building any new ones, is "pro motorist" it shows how broken your Overton Window is. Sunak isn't getting my vote with that pathetic nothingness.
https://www.actionmanhq.co.uk/action-man-accessories/index.php
Worryingly, it all looks rather military. But look on the bright side - perhaps he will volunteer to liberate Melitopol single-handedly.
🇪🇺 "The European Union has warned that it may ban the sale of some components to Turkiye and other countries where Iran and Russia buy parts for UAVs", - The Guardian
https://x.com/maks_nafo_fella/status/1707476316008718379?s=46
At the time, it did feel like it was just another moderately good line that wouldn't resonate beyond PMQs. But Sunak appears to have taken quite personal exception to it - his spin doctors were trying to push a "man of action" rebuttal later that day and the torrent of trivial announcements started very soon after.
I wonder if we might look back at it as being an obvious turning point.
And you think it's my window that's broken?
If the Tories want to win my vote back they'd need to do something positive. Simply not being overly hostile to driving isn't pro motorist and isn't a vote winner.
If Labour do become overtly hostile though, that could become a vote loser. But Starmer is probably too smart to go down that dead end road.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaoliang_liquor
...while telling the story of his birth, Li Kao describes kaoliang as "the finest paint thinner and worst wine ever invented"...
https://www.wearethemighty.com/mighty-history/the-world-war-ii-origins-of-navy-torpedo-juice/
I think Labour will probably win an overall majority, but then 2029 or 2034 will go hung.
Starmer's entire reason for being is to do what Corbyn couldn't do and win the election.
Any announcements can't cost actual money, because the whole narrative is that the government doesn't have any money.
Furthermore, the UK can blow rasperries at the EU, but can't do anything substantively Brexity/ECHRxity. Windsor Agreement has seen to that.
That rules out a lot, and the things it leaves risk becoming very samey after a while.
There's a lot they could do if they wanted to pursue a zero-sum game of posing as the motorist's friend by being hostile to all other road users, or all other policy objectives.
Hope all is well for you?
Nose reapplied to grindstone.
Bad as the last days of Brown and Major were, I don't recall them being this bad. Maybe Rishi can't pick up on the "you're going to lose when you have the election, so the best thing to do is to forget the electioneering and go for the things that are just the right things to do" vibes.
Let's see how far BR's defence of personal freedom will stretch...
In Korea
Being insincere
Rob from the poorest to give tax cuts . What an absolute cesspit this government is .
Russia has reportedly increased its spending on the war to $100 billion, or one third of all public expenditure.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-doubles-2023-defence-spending-plan-war-costs-soar-document-2023-08-04/
Of course, from Ukraine and the west's perspective, this is bad news. It is a sign that Russia is willing to go increasingly far in order to get some form of pyrrhic 'victory'.
From Russia's point of view, it is an utter disaster. Spending countless billions on machines that will get blown up in Ukraine; on sending more men into an unnecessary meat grinder, instead of investing in things that would actually make Russia stronkier, such as industry, education and infrastructure.
This is not 1942; it is not a war for Russia's existence. If the war was to end tomorrow, Russia would remain.
What a waste.
Bedbug crisis sparks political row in Paris as insect ‘scourge’ continues
Disgust spreads across country as travellers post videos apparently showing insects on Paris public transport
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/29/bedbug-crisis-political-row-paris-insect-scourge-continues
They use the money to fund watching rugby. They. Do Not. Need. It.
You can argue that making it means tested is inefficient, but I think it needs to happen.
Yeah, it's an interesting film. Kind of art house but the most commercial of all Greenaways movies.
Having a coalition is only really worth it if it gives you a working majority (as in 2010). Then the participants can sensibly come up with a coalition agreement where you sketch out a programme for the next four or five years, where you get some of the things you want, and sacrifice other things.
But if the SNP weren't getting involved then, on those numbers, there is no arrangement that would give Labour the sort of numbers to meaningfully offer anything, or any real hope of stumbling on to anything like full term - everything would be subject to a negotiation with the SNP or, less likely, with a group of Tories. Then it's just Labour offering Lib Dems imaginary legislation that can't possibly get through, and Lib Dems offering to support stuff but without anything like the numbers to get it over the line.
I'm not really sure there is a coalition agreement of any kind to be made there with the remaining parties. So Davey and others would most likely just say Starmer can come in as caretaker because the Tories need removing and someone has to do it, but essentially it's a holding position for a fresh election within months.
He had the chance to become the grown up in the room, after the Tories inflicted first Johnson then Truss upon us all, but has flunked it.
But it should have.
£1500 is minimum wage, more like.
On the numbers being floated, though, Labour would be 80+ short of a majority. That's miles off expectations and it isn't just hard to push on for a couple of years but basically impossible.
https://www.avtrinity.com/uk-average-salary#:~:text=The median average salary for,from £31,285 in 2021).
Of course all Governments struggle with the fact that doing things takes time, whereas Opposition ideas are instant (countered by the fact that they at least can DO things) but rightly or wrongly he comes across as even more cautious. Perhaps extra vulnerable to the “you’ve had 13 years” attack line at the election.
"It would be nice to learn that some arcane constitutional principle was in play, and that Simon Case, the cabinet secretary, had intervened to declare that the Conservatives were no longer entitled to the final slot (often the best one, in most presentational contexts) on grounds of fairness (or perhaps as a sanction for uselessness). Sadly, the answer is a lot more boring.
The main UK parties have staged their conferences with the Liberals first, Labour next and the Conservatives last since the 1950s. It has run like this regardless of who was in government.
But several years ago Labour wanted to make a block booking for the ACC conference centre in Liverpool over multiple years. That was fine, but the week they wanted for 2023 was already booked, and so Labour asked the other parties if they would be happy to switch. And they agreed.
Sorry. It’s not much of a tale. But it does show the parties can agree on some things."
What did you expect?
LAB: 47% (+2)
CON: 27% (-1)
LDEM: 10% (+1)
REF: 7% (+1)
GRN: 5% (-1)
via
@wethinkpolling
, 28 - 29 Sep
https://x.com/BritainElects/status/1707764144953319785?s=20
One of the oddities of the post 7-bins polls has been a pretty meagre performance by the Greens. Exactly the opposite of what I expected. I thought the salience of net zero as an issue would give them a boost of 2 or 3%.
Allotments - discounts for pensioners?
Burial Grounds - ditto. Challenge Labour to match the pledge, scream about death taxes if they don't
Bus Shelters - get rid
Clocks - levelling-up funds to be diverted to paying for new town clocks in every marginal constituency
Footpaths - ignore
Gifts - yes please
Litter - national litter-picking service, with all 16-25 year olds required to spend 4 hours each week picking litter. No expenses to be paid
Postal and Telecommunication facilities - Internet providers will be required to sponsor red telephone boxes in every Tory-voting village
Public conveniences - ban trans and non-binary people
Rights of way - abolish
Seats (public) - national campaign to increase sponsorship. Require that they all incorporate anti-loitering features.
Traffic calming - concentrate on traffic enragement instead
War memorials - make poppies compulsory for all
https://x.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1707679055124779062?s=61
That’s supposed to be their most modern fighter. Oh well.
I took my son out of school in the UK at age 7 earlier this year and enrolled him in to school in Finland.
The school in Finland is completely open, anyone can walk in and out of it. The kids all walk to and from school by themselves from age 7 onwards. They are encouraged to by the school.
You can't actually take the car to drop your kids off at school, you are forbidden to park anywhere.
This is just outside a city center.
The roads all have seperate footpaths, cycle paths, safe crossings etc.
Around our house there are forests, cliffs, rocks, playgrounds etc, the kids just roam around freely.
In the end, this is all a choice; as a parent I consider the benefits far outweigh the risks of this situation.
Parents and schools in the UK should be able to make the same decisions.
*edit* Meat and bin nonsense. Stupid ideas are coming so fast it's hard to keep up.
A year more of this and we will be positively reevaluating Liz Truss's reign.
God knows what is going on in government that this pile of tripe sounds like a good idea to the whiz kids.
Bastards