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Is Sunak going to make it to the election – politicalbetting.com
Is Sunak going to make it to the election – politicalbetting.com
One of the things that intrigues me about the current betting markets is that there is so little speculation on the future of the prime minister.
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The commentary that Meeks has linked to in his latest tweet is worth putting up here as an article?
Perspiring more likely.
Storm Babet brought flooding to Dundee that I had not seen the like of in the more than 40 years I have lived here. Only 3 years ago Storm Arwen did terrible damage to our woods.
There is so much more energy in weather systems now that what used to be extreme events are becoming the new normal. The implications for our already creaking infrastructure and future developments are severe. It is yet another major cost that we will have to address once we have a functioning government again.
https://twitter.com/BestForBritain/status/1716836663475716381?t=IzhZcGXdq4YNWY1pOJ06rg&s=19
Nothing to do with either our inadequate infrastructure to deal with climate change.
BUT:
I think there is a case, if Sunak is facing all but certain defeat, where he might quit as Tory leader but not PM, and let a new candidate fight the GE.
Technically, that allows him to avoid the heavy loss and he can have some legacy on the after dinner speech circuit as coming in as a crisis manager etc without the difficult footnote that he led his party to a landslide defeat.
I do not put it past Sunak or the Tory Party to try a wheeze like that to present themselves as the change candidates in the election.
Still damaging to what is left of the Tory rep. But perhaps less damaging
I don't care how absurd replacing Sunak would be - they ARE absurd and will do it if they thought it would help.
I don't think it will happen because who do you replace him with? Can the parliamentary party coalesce around a true winner? And either get that person through the members vote or get away without one?
Sunak will be PM until January of 2025.
Sunak should call a GE in the spring. The longer this drags on the worse it gets.
Anyhow, more posters of kidnapped Israelis being ripped down by some lovely people. Leicester Square, this time:
https://twitter.com/richferrer/status/1716925743413010698
The question for aspiring Tories is whether it is worth being Prime Minister for a few months before losing the general election and then being ruthlessly consigned to the Opposition backbenches. It's a career-ender. Alternative career paths include standing down now in order to maximise job opportunities out of office, or waiting until Opposition before taking up the reins of leadership and sweeping back to power in 2029.
So if Rishi is to be replaced, it is probably by an older candidate looking to retire anyway.
Last time I did this, I was in hospital with meningitis the next day.
(Correlation != causation...)
(And by some of us, I mean me, many Israelis, the UN, the United States and so on.)
But to go out of your way to remove images of kidnapped hostages? Why? What possible non-awful reason can there be for that? Do they think the people are not captured? Do they think its a good thing they are? Do they want to pretend the massacre never happened so they can use decades old lines without variation?
- November: Autumn Statement (or is it a Budget?) in which the Chancellor confirms the Triple Lock and an 8% increase in state pension for the core vote.
- November: Flights resume to Rwanda.
- December: Inflation falls to between 5% - 6% (roughly half of where it was).
- Autumn/Winter: Number of boat crossings falls (though not stopped).
- January: Close 50 hotels housing migrants appealing to the Right.
- March: Close a further 50 hotels housing migrants (100 in total) appealing to the Right.
- April: 8% increase kicks in.
- April: Dissolve Parliament and call an Election as the Prime Minister who has halved inflation, stopped the boats, got rid of migrants and protected the Triple Lock.
Of course, the fly in the ointment is the Supreme Court. If they rule against the Government on the Rwanda plan then the Government may be tempted to say "We can't close the hotels because we can't send them to Rwanda. We're being held back by an activist judiciary".And perhaps a healthy dose of ye olde anti-Semitism.
Apparently “context” is very important in racist crap - some stuff isn’t meant for outsiders, I suppose.
Personally as one of the few MPs who was in both Labour Friends of Israel and Labour Friends of Palestine (I was on the executive of the former), I must say I'm losing sympathy with Israel despite the horrific Hamas atrocities. Frankly they should get on with the invasion if they're going to do it and then run the area they occupy until further notice, not just starve the population. And the refusal of a visa to a UN official "to teach them a lesson" sounds petulant and tin-eared.
Not a single person on here, despite all our collective brainpower, has produced a surgical knife that would enable Israel to take out Hamas leaders and fighters without collateral damage. Yet that is what some on here are calling for. It doesn't exist.
The problem these lovely people have is that they're working backwards: they know the truth - that Israel are bad, and Palestinians holy - and cannot stand the sight of any evidence that contradicts that.
I’d be happier if Sky got Save the Children on and asked them questions like “do you accept that all hostages need to be released before a ceasefire can be considered?”
Worth remembering that Greta Thunberg (who I often take issue with) achieved a very effective protest by simply sitting outside the Swedish Parliament for months with billboard and handing out flyers.
Alot of labours support is pro Palestine, not just the Muslim vote. They could easily be turned off labour due to its avid pro Israel stance.
The thing is... The folks in Number 10 and CCHQ aren't that bright. They've mapped it out like that. The announcement from Jenrick about 50 hotels by January and 100 by March was the giveaway.
Of course, if it's the same day as the Locals, even better. That's when people vote the issues that matter - potholes and roads, bin collections ("Three bins, not seven!") Rishi will love it.
The industry has had a torrid time. Still does.
Elephants in rooms.
I’m talking about the kind of racist filth that would, in the U.K., have you in court. And no one would argue it was “fair comment”.
Secondly, a certainty is that Labour voters put off Labour by Palestine etc are not going to vote Tory, so it doesn't help them much.
Even trying to get them to say something like “we condemn all violence” was apparently rude.
If you think some hippies sitting in a road is aggravating, how disruptive is having 2-3 deadly storms every year, food scarcity, etc. etc. I remember seeing that story about the 4x4 mum who nudged a protester with her car, and people being all "right on!". But later that summer, during the heatwave, literally around the corner from where that happened the local field caught fire and caused road closures and property damage and disruption much greater than a single road blockage.
People who tend to be against protesting only see it as a barrier to their treats, or an affront to the fact they put up with life being shit (or have a very comfortable life, thank you very much), so why are these holier than thous making me have to confront these things when I don't want to. When, in reality, lots of these people have tried all other avenues to discharge the anxiety or pressure they're under from whatever thing they are protesting and feel unheard.
The greater difficulty arises, of course, when you come to the discussion on whether those anxieties / pressures are sincere, real or imagined - and where I think more of the conversation should lie. For instance - lots of people I've seen decry XR or JSO as a dangerous mob have no problem with the anti-ULEZ vigilantes who are destroying property (a thing anti protest people usually decry). For what it is worth I think those people have real anxieties, it's just that right wing / false consciousness conspiratorialism aims those anxieties towards the left and the oppressed rather than towards the actual source of their problems.
I was going from the polling released within the last week or so that showed where the sympathies lie.
If they sit on their hands and don't vote, or go Green or Lib Dem, it doesn't exactly do wonders for Labour either.
Tory voters sitting on their hands certainly helped Labour in recent by elections.
Shame he then went from clever initiatives like this to being captured by the Treasury dogma putting up taxes consistently.
They made their bed. Etc etc.
Likewise if I was them I would be snapping up the biggest industrial pumps available and plan to flood the tunnels to get Hamas out, that way they can avoid an underground war with all its casualaties.
But Wetherspoons made a lot of bad headlines during covid for how they treated their staff.
(FWIW my impression was that he had been lied to rather than was lying - but clearly was a receptive audience for Hamas' lies.)
http://www.chiswickw4.com/default.asp?section=info&page=concbp090.htm
I'm curious. At what point of threatening etc, is it OK for me to blow up Kharg Island, because they made me do it?
And I'm not sure a May election would allow you to claim the number of boats is down - you would need an election in March / early April latest to get away with using the lack of boats due to winter weather..
If we were more sensible with the way we treated inherited wealth and elderly care in this country, these wouldn’t be as big factors.
Was one of the few good things Sunak has done.
"EOTHO also increased recruitment in the food preparation & service sector. We observe an increase in the number of jobs posts (by 7%-14%) on the Indeed website. We do not find evidence of an increase in the number of job posts in other industries, suggesting the effect on recruitment was concentrated on food establishments. As this indicator measures the flow of job adverts, a transitory effect on job posts could still imply a permanent increase in the number of employees.
"Over 160 million meals were claimed by the end of September 2020, with government spending £849 million on the policy. Data limitations as well as the interaction between different policies complicate any cost-benefit calculation of the programme. On top of that, there is evidence indicating the increase in footfall due to EOTHO had an adverse effect on new COVID-19 cases. Thus, any economic gains from the scheme may have come at the cost of more infections. Further research – using administrative data– is needed to assess the overall cost-effectiveness of EOTHO."
Perhaps your computer is having a laugh? Time to switch it off and on again methinks
TSE has already said there was a mixup, and he'll be republishing it later on. Probably a consequence of that.
As we have seen in conversations here over the last fortnight, no matter how much anyone sympathetic to the Palestinian cause says what Hamas did was atrocious, but that the loss of civilian life in Palestine is not an acceptable reaction, the response is always - well, does Israel not have the right to defend itself? What else is Israel supposed to do? Should Israel have to put up with a neighbour that wishes to wipe them out? Which makes no sense when Israel is by far the best funded military in the area, backed by the US, and controls most of the borders of Gaza and the West Bank. It has been a source of contention for years that the UN and other international bodies will repeatedly point to Israeli treatment of the Palestinians as a problem, as crimes, as illegal under international law - and yet they can because they are supported by the global superpower.
I was listening to someone talk about this yesterday, which kind of crystalised the madness of this to me. Gaza is not a recognised state - not by Israel and not by the international community at large (some individual states do, but only some). Were Gaza a state the acts of Israel over the last decade would be grounds for Gaza to declare war on Israel - the blockades and sieges, the killing of Palestinians on their land, the incursions onto their land, etc.
But Gaza is not a state, it is an occupied area - occupied by Israel. If it is occupied land, then Israel cannot be at war with it - at best it would be managing its occupied territories, it has obligations under international law. Under international law an occupying power cannot be "provoked" by those it occupies in to war. So, by casting Gaza as this state-that-is-not-a-state Israeli policy towards it can be both the justification for treating Gaza and the Palestinians there inhumanely, whilst at the same time saying that their reactions to that treatment are a justification for more of the same.
Again, what Hamas did earlier this month was abominable, a crime itself - but the treatment of civilian Palestinians prior to that and now are bigger "elephants in the room" in my mind then repeatedly condemning Hamas and then going "and therefore that means Israel can do ______"
They've managed to make the flats look like Market Stalls https://www.bairstoweves.co.uk/properties/15419208/sales/GRA210539#/
Ikea skip the language translation problems anyway by simply giving only pictures.
The only question is whether she wants to take the chance to fight a campaign for a dying government or wants a 5 year reign as LOTO first.
But I've never had a problem with Ikea furniture and the pictures. Just remember to look from all angles if the picture doesn't make sense...
What should the UK version of Krystalnacht be called? We might want to start researching it early.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/oct/24/starmer-gravely-misrepresented-meeting-say-muslim-leaders-in-wales
The news just seems to get worse day by day, bit by bit.
I log on. Find @Alanbrooke wrote a compelling but contentious header, which got prematurely shut down. When I look for it, the piece has actually disappeared?!
This has the whiff of censorship. I’m sure I’m wrong and it will be restored and republished
It seems that those still frothing about EOTHO have no problems with British people going to a restaurant at that time as long as that restaurant was in another country with far more prevalent covid.
Of course that does mean they might actually do it, eventually
God. I'm doing the Government's job for them. Get a grip.
https://www.savethechildren.net/news/children-are-paying-heaviest-price-violence-israel-and-occupied-palestinian-territory-escalates
The Tory MPs are obviously considering what happens if Sunak were to be ousted. Having had 3 PMs in under 4 years, chosing another one would be a public display of desperation, which is almost always a vote loser.
As Mike keeps on hinting, the challenge for the Tories is to convice the don't knows and the will not vote's who voted Tory in 2019 to vote Tory again. Is this group really going to be impressed by there being yet another ousting of PM, a leadership challendge and a new PM?